Defining terminology is one of the important tasks of scientific knowledge. The terminology in the use of simulation technologies in foreign and Russian experience differs in some respects; this also applies to training and assessment of professional communication skills in medicine. For their successful and effective implementation in the educational process of healthcare professionals, it is important, in our opinion, to study the etymology and evolution of the use of the simulated /standardized patient (SP) terminology and the possibilities of its use in medical education in Russia.

Ensuring highly realistic simulation in training and assessing the clinical skills of healthcare professionals is one of the important tasks in the development of simulation technologies. Using the method of analyzing OSCE video fragments in the accreditation procedure, it was possible to consider the work of simulated / standardized patients when assessing communication skills in the accreditation procedure for healthcare professionals in the Russian Federation, as a condition for ensuring highly realistic simulation.

Physicians must be competent communicators to effectively practice medicine, and communication is one of six required competencies identified by the Accreditation Council on Graduate Medical Education (ACGME). 1 Elements of competent communication are featured in four of the six ACGME competencies.The Association of American Medical Colleges (AAMC) also published recommendations for communication in the Medical School Objective Project, Paper III. 2 The National Board of Medical Examiners (NBME) is requiring Objective Standardized Clinical Examinations (OSCEs) to assess interviewing and communication skills.The Institute of Medicine, in its 2004 report, "Im-proving Medical Education: Enhancing the Behavioral and Social Science Content of Medical School Curricula," names communication skills as one of six curricular domains. 3The strong agreement about the importance of competent communication in medical practice challenges medical educators to develop effective tools to determine competence.Assessing communication competence is complex.Skills that require performance are difficult to assess through disembodied means (such as written tests) but require in-vivo demonstration. 4 Further, competence is not defined solely by the presence or absence of specific behaviors but rather by the presence and timing of effective verbal and nonverbal behaviors within the context of individual interactions with patients or families. 5Effective communication includes the ability to adapt, to be responsive, and to manage self-awareness during the process of talking and listening.Additionally, effective communication is not only dependent on the observable behaviors of the physician but also on the behaviors and perceptions of patients.What constitutes effective communication in one setting or with

The assessment of communication skills in the accreditation procedure is carried out in simulated conditions with the participation of a standardized patient (SP). SP is a clinical history simulator. A standardized patient in accreditation is a standard of behavior: the same conditions for all accredited, strict adherence to the clinical scenario, a dosed story of the scenario strictly in accordance with the accredited’ communicative actions (actions according to the checklist). The preparation of a joint venture in Russia at the moment is a continuous complex process. The theses present the results of the work carried out.

The experience of the implementation of the educational project "Communicative skills of a doctor" in the Ural State Medical University in Yekaterinburg, its main guidelines and principles, as well as the results of studying the content of the patient's image in the context of its impact on the effectiveness of interaction in medical consultation in the direction of its patient-orientation are presented.

The main problems of attracting persons to the role of “standardized patient” in the procedure for assessing the communication skills of doctors during the accreditation of medical specialists are outlined; possible directions of solutions are proposed.

The article provides data on the study of the patient’s image as a component of the image of the world among students of a medical university. The theoretical and methodological foundation was the provision that the image of the patient is implicitly represented in the semantic space of future doctors by semantic categories in the structure of a holistic multi-level system of ideas about the world, other people, about themselves and their activities, i.e. image of the world. The patient’s image was studied as a factor in the effectiveness of the interaction between the doctor and the patient in the provision of medical care. The effectiveness of interaction is one of the tools for making relevant clinical decisions, taking into account the opinion of the patient, which ensures patient-oriented medical consultation. 300 students of the 1 and 6 courses of the Ural State Medical University of the Faculty of Medicine were examined. The patient’s image was experimentally studied using methods: semantic personality differential, color metaphors and color choices. Based on the results obtained, it is concluded that the image of a patient in medical students is represented by various kinds of semantic categories (friendly, irrational, irritable, etc.). The content of the semantic categories of the patient’s image differs at the beginning and at the end of training: from multidirectional characteristics to ordered in the form of a typical and ideal patient. It has been established that the content of the patient’s image can be purposefully formed when mastering the educational program. The inclusion of an educational module in clinical teaching disciplines on the skills of professional communication with the patient (as one of the tools for making clinical decisions in the provision of medical care) affects the change in the content of the patient’s image in future doctors.