Medical Simulation Specialists

PatientPractice offers creative guidance and perspective, to help Simulation Teams deliver better training days. You will gain a deeper understanding of simulation, and how to work with actors to markedly improve training outcomes.

Actors are from Venus,
Doctors are from Mars.

Emma Mulkern is a London-based, professional actor and medical role-play specialist, bridging the gap between medical professionals and actors in simulation. Primarily working with the award-winning Maudsley Simulation team, she has been delivering medical simulation training across various parts of the NHS for the last 8 years.

Emma has completed specialist training with Maudsley, working with both psychiatrists and patient educators to hone her understanding of various mental health conditions.

Although primarily working in CAMHS, Emma also specialises in obstetrics and paediatrics courses, specifically ‘breaking bad news' scenarios.

Emma is passionate about the importance of simulation training and its benefit to both service users and practitioners. She recently delivered a workshop at the International Paediatric Simulation Society Worldwide conference in Florida .

Incredibly accomplished in her field

I have enjoyed every minute of working with Emma. She is incredibly accomplished in her field. She has been able to persuasively depict a wide array of ages, psychiatric conditions, and situations in a manner that is captivating to watch as well as exceptionally educational, both in live simulation and under filming conditions. I have been particularly impressed by her ability to organically react in the moment to new people presented in scenarios to her, whilst maintaining integrity to the character she has been requested to depict, and the direction she has been given. In addition - she maintains the utmost professionalism.

Dr Marcela Schilderman

Specialist trainee in general and older adult psychiatry (ST7)

Engages with the team

Emma takes the role of the simulated patient (SP) very seriously and engages with the team to really understand the patient experience within mental health services. She has taken on very challenging roles including those of a young person with a variety of emotional responses to anorexia, self harm and family distress. These aren’t easy roles to play but she has been insightful to allow the team to support her in post debrief sessions. She has contributed to developing many of the SP storylines with her own experiences.

Sandra Parish

An amazing actor

It has been a pleasure to work with Emma over the past year. Emma is professional, responsive and very reliable. She is an amazing actor and never fails to surprise me with her skill. Participants often ask for me to pass on their gratitude to Emma following a course and feel she has particularly contributed to the high fidelity of the scenarios.

Dr Claire Tiley

Fellow in Medical Education, Maudsley Learning

A whole new level

As healthcare professionals, we are often well aligned with our patients from an empathy perspective, Emma’s portrayal of patients takes this to a whole new level that is essential to delivering high quality simulation based scenarios. From a facilitator perspective, Emma’s work as a role player is mind blowing. She positively contributes to the scenario writing, as well as clarifying and establishing the key details from the character’s perspective, becoming an expert in her own right on the topic...that her work as a role player is highly complimented by our learners on every course she is involved in.

Dr Lucine Nahabedian

Paediatric Registrar (ST6)

Able to play myriad roles

Emma has been an absolute pleasure to work alongside, and constant professional on many courses over the last few years. We have been able to deliver learning that would not have been possible with a trained experienced professional able to play myriad roles across the course of each session. Our learners continuously highlight not just the benefit that having a trained actor has brought to their session, but also the many roles she is able to perform over a single session, and how they both enjoyed and learned from the experience, difficult to gain in any other educational setting.

Dr Ash Holt

Consultant Paediatrician

A consummate professional

Working with Emma has been an absolute joy. She is a consummate professional, she prepares impeccably for roles and asks very pertinent questions to clarify exactly what is being portrayed, why and what the learning goals are. She gives huge insight into the experience from the other side as patient and parent, depending on the role she is playing.

Dr Annabel Copeman

Consultant Paediatrician

Just like being with a real patient

Emma is able to take direction and understand what‘s needed of her in each situation. Our learners always comment that these scenarios feel very real and that it’s just like being with a real patient for them. Emma portrays the patients very authentically and is very talented at this! It’s always a pleasure to work with her as she’s passionate about mental health and improving patient care and is great company.

Anita Bignell

Lead Simulation Nurse Tutor

Amazing ability to adapt

Emma always steps up to the challenges of obstetric simulation days! Her amazing ability to adapt to different roles has meant she has excelled as a bereaved mother, a woman in advanced labour and more recently medical roles such as a junior doctor and theatre practitioner. Emma always takes time to fully understand the characters she is playing which gives us confidence the scenarios will run to perfection. Emma’s enthusiastic, bubbly and fun personality has made her an ideal fit with the ObSim faculty and we’re delighted she is one of our team.

Lucy Morse

Consultant Obstetrician (Maternal Medicine)

Optimise your training goals

In order to get the best out of an actor in simulation training it is essential to communicate your desired outcomes effectively, as well as providing sufficient context for the simulated character.

Emma offers training workshops to equip simulation educators with a broader understanding of how to work with professional actors to deliver more effective training and optimise your learning goals.

TALK TO EMMA