Case: Mental Health

This is the role card for the SP who will portray a patient with depression. It contains the background and medical information for preparing the SP for the role play. The patient has come to the Public Health Department of City Hall for the first time, and the nurse will assess their mental health and help to make a follow-up appointment with a psychiatrist.

(Please adapt the name, age, address, phone number, and any other details to match your SP's character and context.)

These are the instructions for the SP portraying the mental health patient. It includes information on consent, students' backgrounds, meeting details, and descriptions of the tasks included in the role plays: mental health assessment & support, medication explanation, sleep, and activity diary tasks.

(Please adapt the details to match your context.)

This is the role card for the nursing student who will portray a Public Health Nurse meeting a patient/client who does not speak Japanese. It includes a checklist of tasks for the nurse role to complete in the role play, which will be evaluated by the examiner. This task could be completed by two students breaking the task into two parts. 

(Please adapt the checklist to match your goals and context.)

This is the nurse's role-play card for the Explaining Medication task. The nurse will check the medicine function, kind, dosage, and side effects and answer the patient's questions. 

(Please adapt the checklist to match your goals and context.)

This role play card includes explaining and showing the patient how to keep sleep and activity diaries, as well as helping them to choose some new activities. 

(Please adapt the checklist to match your goals and context.)

This is the role card for the examiner who will evaluate the nurse's role play interaction. It consists of a checklist coordinating with the nurse's role play card and should be used by the examiner to assess the role play.

(Please adapt the checklist to match your goals and context, for example, adding Communicative Skills.)

This role card is to be used by the examiner to evaluate the nurse role in the Explaining Medication task. It has a checklist for orientation, medication explanation, language, and how the nurse exits the interaction with the patient.

(Please adapt the checklist to match your goals and context, for example, adding more Communicative Skills.)

This is the checklist for the nurse to explain how to record sleep and activity diaries, as well as choose some new activities to try. The nurse is evaluated on the orientation, explanations, language, and exit. 

(Please adapt the checklist to match your goals and context.)

This is a suicide prevention support leaflet. It was developed using information from the U.S. Embassy & Consulates in Japan's information about Mental Health25. The Simulated Patient uses it as a prop when they first go to the Public Health Office.

It is also a good idea to use real maps of local psychiatric hospitals with contact details, so that the Simulated Patent can choose a convenient hospital at which the nurse can help to make a simulated appointment (in Japanese).