Faces I work with 11

This is Jim. Jim is an actor.

Today I was back at Surgeons' Hall the headquarters of the Royal College of Surgeons Edinburgh.

Jim is an actor/simulated patient I have worked with for a number of years. He is excellent at his job. He has to be a patient or relative in a scenario into which a candidate for the award of Member of the Royal College of Surgeons (MRCS) has to step to prove his or her communication skills.

So 40 times a day, Jim goes through the same scenario - and it has to be consistently the same each time. It is not easy, but Jim does it brilliantly. Obviously I can't publish the scenarios that are presented to candidates - but the demands on the actor are very great.

Jim discovered he had a heart problem when thirteen candidates in a row at another Royal College heard it on their stethoscopes - and he had to have surgery soon after. So in some ways his life was saved by the job!

The most amazing fact about Jim is that he is part of the 1936 Cohort - a group of people born in 1936 who have been monitored through all the years to check their development. And now, I suppose, their rate of ageing. Yes, Jim is 74 - hard to credit, eh?