For American author Leslie Jamison, being a medical actor was a way to make extra cash when she was younger. But it paid off in other, unexpected ways too.
The job, which involved pretending to have various ailments while trainee doctors practised examination, was an up-close exercise in learning how people can nail empathy – and what it feels like when they get it wrong.
While Jamison performed the symptoms of pre-eclampsia, for example, or a burst appendix, the responses of the real doctors-in-training alternated between genuine and hollow.
