Standardized clinical encounters are fun and motivating because of their authenticity. Standardized clinical encounters can be reproduced when and where necessary. Standardized clinical encounters provide a convenient way of augmenting the clinical experiences available to students and of controlling the mix of experiences they receive. Information should be learned in the context of application so that it is more easily retrievable in future clinical practice circumstances. Likewise, tests should assess the use of information rather than just its possession.
Expertise is more than a set of facts.
It includes familiarity with problems common to an area of practice and a repertoire of common solutions used in the field. Experience with standardized clinical encounters provides individuals with the practice necessary to develop these problem-solving routines and to recognize the situations in which each is likely to be useful. Standardized clinical encounters provide a means of directly comparing students across a broad range of clinical competencies and does so in a controlled manner that yields confidence in the assessment results. There are many computer simulations available for clinical training and assessment purposes. The use of live standardized patient increases realism.