The Standardized Patient Program at Southern Illinois University School of Medicine (SIUSOM) has been in operation for over twenty years and has had difficulty maintaining cultural diversity.  We therefore are initiating an effort to increase the cultural diversity of our program to match that of the general population in Sangamon County, Illinois, where SIUSOM is located. 

The Standardized Patient (SP) Program would like to be able to offer a culturally and ethnically-diverse population of SPs for use by faculty at the medical school.  This would enable faculty to use patient cases to introduce culturally sensitive issues to the medical students.  The SP program will try to achieve this goal by improving its SP recruitment strategies.  At present, the majority of SP candidates are recruited by individuals who work in the program and/or are friends of SIUSOM employees, rather than through any systematic method of identification and recruitment.  This may contribute to the unequal distribution of cultures within the SP program. 

Methods: To accomplish our diversity recruitment goal, representatives from the various cultures will be invited to review our current recruitment strategies and advise us on how to adapt them to attract candidates from their culture.  Their recommendations will be used to revise our current recruitment procedures, and then a series of outreach sessions will be conducted to attract and inform members of the different cultural groups.  These sessions will be held cooperatively with the culture representatives at times and in locations that are easily accessible to their population.

Results: Data on the number of attendees, new recruits and success of the revised informational meetings will be collected and evaluated.

Conclusion: By adapting our recruitment procedures to the needs of the various populations, we hope to increase the cultural diversity of the SP program at SIUSOM and make it more representative of Sangamon County.