Case Study – Healthcare Training Film

The great thing about being an actor is that you can work on a huge range of projects, creating all kinds of characters that deliver an important message. One exciting project we completed recently was working with a healthcare client to deliver a series of short role plays. Read on to find out more…

Diabetes role plays for discussions, debate, meetings and training sessions

Around 6% of the population are living with diabetes, that’s around 4.6 million people. It can, in the main, be a disease that is controllable but with the prevalence of diabetes increasing in the UK, healthcare providers are taking action.

There are many ways of doing this but one is an effective and quick diagnosis. The symptoms of diabetes, both type 1 and type 2, can be easily mistaken for other ailments.

It is essential, therefore, that health professionals such as GPs, doctors, consultants and nurses are able to spot the signs. But it isn’t always physical symptoms but the clues that patients give when they talk about how they are feeling and so on.

And that means helping healthcare professionals who work with people at risk of developing diabetes to be able to talk and listen to them during a consultation. And that makes training essential.

The project we were involved in

We work with a training healthcare provider recently to provide the material needed for training sessions.

The client wanted a male actor aged 40 to 55 who could act seven ‘real-life scenarios’ with a healthcare professional about diabetes. Across these roleplays, our actor needed to subtly tease out key elements such as examples of good and bad communication, different responses and so on.

Lasting around two to three minutes each, these role play snippets were used as part of an educational training day but will also go on to be a training film that will be used at future events, including conferences and training sessions.

Why hire a professional actor for training videos?

It may be a small snippet of film. It may have an obvious message. But what about other, subtle signs and hints?

As professional actors, our talented people are able to add more to any role play or filmed session. Using all their acting skills, they can turn a scenario on paper into a situation that can feel and look like ‘real life’.

Sometimes, training videos can be so poorly made, acted and scripted that they are almost laughable. And that means the important message is lost. Hiring a professional actor stops this from happening.

In this case, the client is going to use this valuable material in many ways. This wasn’t about creating a one-off film or acting out a role play that would be consumed once. They have a strategy on how investing in a professional actor for their project will go on making a difference for some time to come.

Actors bring so much to a training film. Why not make it true to life and not just real to life by hiring professional actors?