Abstract: Objective To explore the role of standardized patients (SP) in assessing what the effect it may have for international students majoring in clinical medicine in medical history collection. Methods In October 2018 , four English sp (all non-medical students in Wuhan University) and four Chinese bilingual (Chinese and English) examiners who were doctors of Affiliated Hospital of Wuhan University were selected as the subjects . Six-year 112 international students majoring in clinical medicine ,enrolled in 2015 (in English) from Wuhan University were selected as the examinees, they were randomly divided into 4 groups according to student numbers, with 28 in each group. In each group, an English SP was set up and matched with a Chinese bilingual examiner to collect and assess the case history of the students majoring in clinical medicine. English SP was both a standardized patient and an examiner, and both of them were scored independently with the same assessment score table, and the results were compared. Results There was no statistical significant (P>0.05) in the scores of either single items or total points by four English SPs and four Chinese bilingual examiners. The total scores of four groups of English SP and Chinese bilingual examiners are respectively as follows: group A [(76.48 ± 0.68) vs (76.42 ± 0.43),t=0.395, P=0.695]; Group B [(74.22 ± 0.45) vs (74.45 ± 0.54), t=1.731, P=0.089]; group C [(75.09 ± 0.78) vs (74.90 ± 0.89), t=0.850, P=0.399]; group D [(75.82 ± 0.81) vs (75.81 ± 0.65), t=0.051, P=0.960]. Conclusions The trained non-medical international students can play a role both as SP and examiner. Since bilingual SP is not available at the moment in China, it is a feasible alternative for the application of well-trained English speaking SP in collection of cases history.

Key words: Native English speaker of standardized patients, Collection of cases history, Objective structured clinical examination, International students