This Series Reveals The Weird World Of People Paid To Be Sick And We Can’t Look Away

Sickos is a show about characters stuck in a world they are never going to leave. In this case it’s a job. In a basement. That looks like a fake hospital. Welcome to the world of Standardized Patients, where you’re paid to be other people. Other people with hemorrhoids.

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The thing about life is that the more you get into it, the more you learn about it, the more aspects of life you’d never thought about before simultaneously get weirder and make more sense when you learn about them. What do I mean? Well, take this series, for example, from creators Laura McKenzie, Laura Grey, and MW Heider. It turns out that there is such a thing as a “simulated patient” (also known as a standardized patient or sample patient), and they have one job: pretend to be sick so that medical school students learn how to talk to patients.

To unpack this, it means I am today years old when I found out that some of the most important jobs in the medical field have an element of theater and dress-up during their training. This is amazing, or could be. This simultaneously seems incredibly strange (to be either the “patient” being paid to pretend to be sick or the medical school student and staff trying to take it seriously) and incredibly vital and obvious (how else will these people learn to talk to patients??). Don’t take it from me: here’s an account of a real-life standardized patient, and a piece by the New Yorker on the art of portraying medical maladies.

To learn more about this weird world, watch this amazing series, featuring Jordan Klepper (The Opposition with Jordan Klepper on Comedy Central).

Check out the entire series below.

Sickos: A Few Good Sickos

Sickos: Ante Up

Sickos: Deja Vu

Sickos: Boob

Sickos: Head To Toe

Sickos: Meryl Streep

Sickos: STD

Sickos: Scarface

CREDITS:

Created and Written by: Laura McKenzie, Laura Grey, MW Heider
Directed by: Matt Miller
Produced by: P.J. Fishwick
Executive Producers: Matt Abramson & David Brixton
Director of Photography: Darryl Miller
Editor: Tim Warmanen & Alfred Cisneros
Production Designer: Merje Veski
Costume Designer: Lizzie Cook
Sound Mixer: Danny Rodriguez

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Published at Tue, 19 Feb 2019 18:36:20 +0000