I was quite surprised to hear that in the US, there are people called GTAs (Gynecological Teaching Associates) who lend their own bodies for intimate examinations, besides paid actors — also known as “simulated patients.”
In stark contrast to the actors, GTAs — who are mostly females — are specifically trained to be the subject of pelvic, recto-vaginal and breast exams, and both types of model-in-the flesh have the great advantage over full-body manikins and small plastic models (which are used in both the US and Western Europe), that they can give actual feedback to the trainees.
(And real vaginal tissue has a different touch than its plastic counterpart, of course.)
To the best of my knowledge — and certainly in the academic hospitals where my girlfriend (who is a urologist) and her peers were educated — no actors nor GTAs exist in most Western European countries except The Netherlands, Sweden and UK: besides the manikins, trainees train on corpses (yes indeed), but most importantly on real patients.
Those patients are informed that a trainee could be present, or even be involved in the physical examination, but usually it’s not that big of a fuss, and virtually all patients agree.
And to be honest: that’s the best way to learn about the intimate exams. The real patients are really sick, and only in those patients the inexperienced trainee can learn how to detect irregularities and the like.
Paid actors and GTAs can help to break the ice though (so to speak), but no such examination can prepare the trainee for a patient with a prostate tumor the size of a grapefruit, with stinking tumor pus oozing out of his rectum after even the slightest digital touch.
And this particular patient will scream while you try to give him a helping hand (or digit, for that matter) —
Not smile, and receive a paycheck at the end of the day.
SOURCES: Internet Archive Book Images, No restrictions, via Wikimedia Commons.