Examinations

Medical Examinations

Professional Role Players (PRP) is the largest supplier of role players for medical examinations in the United Kingdom, trusted by leading universities, Royal Colleges, and healthcare organisations nationwide.

We provide highly trained role players for both undergraduate and postgraduate medical assessments, ensuring every examination is consistent, realistic, and fair.

Why Choose PRP for Your Medical Examinations?

When you book with PRP, you’re choosing excellence, reliability, and professionalism. Our role players bring more than just performance they bring a deep understanding of assessment standards, clinical accuracy, and candidate experience.

Here’s what you can expect:

Expertly Trained Role Players

All our role players are trained through our quality-assured PRP+ Programme, which goes beyond acting skills to instil the precision and consistency needed for high-stakes assessments.

Standardisation & Consistency

Our role players are specialists in standardised assessments. They deliver reliable performances across all stations, ensuring every candidate receives a fair and comparable experience.

Diverse Casting Pool

We offer a broad pool of role players of varying ages, genders, ethnicities, and languages, allowing us to meet exact scenario requirements and support culturally inclusive assessments.

Realistic Character Portrayals

Our role players are equipped to authentically portray:

  • Patients (with or without specific physical symptoms)

  • Family members

  • Healthcare professionals (including the use of appropriate medical terminology and professional behaviour)

  • Bilingual characters and interpreters in multilingual scenarios

Many of our role players are fluent in English and at least one other language, with a nuanced understanding of relevant cultural dynamics.

Clinical Accuracy

Role players:

  • Recall scenario-specific information accurately

  • Avoid over-disclosing details not yet elicited by the candidate

  • Respond appropriately to physical examination techniques with realistic verbal and non-verbal cues

  • Reflect clinical signs to aid accurate diagnosis where required

Consistency Across Roles

For examinations requiring multiple role players in the same scenario, our performers work to ensure uniform delivery, preserving assessment integrity.

Assessment Support

If required, role players can make objective observations about a candidate’s performance, contributing to examiner evaluations.

Fully Managed Booking Process

PRP handles all administration, from selecting suitable role players to delivering secure, scenario-specific briefings. Our structured and dependable process ensures your examination day runs seamlessly.

Let PRP help you deliver high-quality, standardised, and equitable medical assessments that prepare future clinicians for real-world challenges.

Your role players created well balanced, realistic and responsive characters from their briefs, helping make the exam credible and challenging for the students.

Ian Noonan, Head of Undergraduate Mental Health Nursing, King's College London

The service we have received from PRP has always been of the highest standard and we shall be happy to continue to use your services in the future.

Dr Sylvia Awbery, Chief Examiner, Faculty of Occupational Medicine

Having used PRP for a number of years, I have always found them professional, punctual, and that they have conducted themselves with maturity.

Robert Cole, Florence Nightingale School of Nursing & Midwifery, KCL

The service is always impeccable and the quality of the role players they use is excellent.

Amanda Barber, Senior Business Manager, Health Education England

On behalf of all the OSCE team, I would like to say thank you for the standard and professionalism of the role players- they were easy to work with and did a great job.

James Holland, Clinical Assessment Software Developer and Data Analyst, KCL

The role players you provided for my mock exam were completely believable, and listening to them play their parts made me laugh, cry and get quite scared of them. They really are excellent.

Susan Halliwell-Bass, Division Manager, Royal College of Psychiatrists

Your role players are brilliant!

John D. Carrion, Examinations Project Development Manager, Royal College of Psychiatrists

The actors PRP supply are professional and well prepared in their roles. They can also give us useful feedback of how it feels to be having an assessment.

Margaret Hodgetts, Trainer, Atos

PRP have reliably provided us with well-briefed and capable simulated patients for teaching and assessment of undergraduate medical students. The PRP office team are quick to respond to queries, take time to listen to requirements and are proactive in seeking clarification of any areas of uncertainty.

Sarah Bradley, Senior Clinical Skills Tutor, University of Exeter Medical School

I have always been impressed with the professionalism and skill of the role players provided by PRP in both formative and summarise assessments as well as in simulation based learning scenarios. The role players have always arrived in good time to review the scenarios. The role players are always very keen to reflect with trainers/educators so to ensure the characters are portrayed in a way that achieves training objectives/goals. The role players willingly participate in post-scenario debriefing sessions providing useful/empathic insights into subtle communication skills.

Dr Geoff Lawrence-Smith, Joint Director of Medical Education, Oxleas NHS Foundation Trust

The MFSRH team and I would like to say a great big thank you to all of your actors for the professional roles they played on the exam day. All of the actors worked so hard and have been given great feedback by the examiners.Thank you to PRP and your team for helping make the exam day go so well.

Lorraine Back, Education Officer, The Faculty of Sexual Reproductive Healthcare