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Dave Lerman gets paid for working as a patient for medical students to practice on. As a former c

Dave Lerman was once a comedian who made audiences of thousands laugh.

He and his partner were guests on the Howard Stern Show. Together, they once toured Las Vegas, and entertained movie deals and television offers.

Six years ago, he took stand-up to the hospital examination room. He does his routine in a hospital gown, pairs perfect comic timing with stoic professionalism, and finds an appreciative audience in UCLA medical and nursing students.

“Hello,” Lerman says he routinely starts off, “I’ll be your next victim – I mean patient.” And then the clinical examination – prostate and testicular cancer, epididymitis, hernia – begins.

Ever since he discovered the vocation of patient surrogate, Lerman has held the bragging rights of having the healthiest genitals in Southern California.

Patient surrogates, healthy individuals who provide themselves as guinea pigs for dozens of clinical exams, are invaluable to the in-training medical community. Used by a variety of medical vocations and in many types of exams or case scenarios, they are often a student’s first clinical experience with a living, breathing individual.

“You can watch a thousand videos and work on a hundred plastic models, but until you’re working on an actual human being, you’re not going to get the gist of something,” Lerman said. “This is very important that the students have some sort of experience before they get into a clinical setting.”

But being a patient surrogate – especially for urologist-hopefuls – is not for the faint at heart.

Performed well, the men’s urology exam should take no longer than three minutes. Lerman, a self-proclaimed “guinea pig extraordinaire,” has become an expert on the well-performed exam.

“I think the reason I’m successful is because I can create a nice rapport,” he said. “I’ll always point out what the students are doing wrong, and what the proper thing is.”

During the exam, medical students look for sores and lesions that might point to epididymitis, an inflammation of the tubes that store and collect sperm in the testicles. Lerman tells them a normal epididymis should feel like a spaghetti noodle.

The students then feel for lumps that may be a sign of testicular cancer.

And finally, a rectal exam, which is “not painful, but definitely the most uncomfortable,” is conducted to check for enlargement of the prostate. The prostate, Lerman says, should feel somewhat like the tip of your nose.

“I’ve had some horror stories where I say ‘I’m never doing this again,’ but what makes me want to do it is the statistics,” Lerman said. “Even though I make light of things, this is very serious. The statistics with this are staggering.”

One in six American men are at risk for prostate cancer, the most commonly diagnosed cancer among men, according to the National Prostate Cancer Coalition. This year, 30,350 men will die from the disease.

But the prostate exam Lerman undergoes is commonly avoided by many men for fear of discomfort, or perhaps after one bad experience.

Patient surrogates are necessary for training the next generation of physicians and nurses in the methods for prevention and early detection of prostate cancer and other diseases.

“(Patient surrogates) are motivated from personal experience and very altruistic motives to help other patients not want to avoid these exams,” said Lynn Doering, an associate professor at the UCLA School of Nursing who has frequently worked with patient surrogates. “It’s really wonderful that they do it.”

In the UCLA School of Nursing, people like Lerman are sometimes called co-instructors or models because of their experienced ability to guide the frequently nervous student through the process.

“This one model was an older woman,” Doering said, speaking of a woman who had frequented the examination room as a surrogate for pelvic exams, “and she was so intent on making sure the students understood how to do this in a way that would ensure the patient’s dignity and make them comfortable.”

Lerman’s very first time as a patient surrogate for UCLA urology students, he had to catch the slack for a friend with cold feet, and endured 90 probing and prodding exams in three days. The average male will probably muster up the guts for one or two in a lifetime.

Fortunately, patient surrogates are paid by exam – up to $250 dollars a day said Mark DeVaney, the program coordinator of the UCLA-San Fernando Valley Internal Medicine Residency Training Program, which recruits patient surrogates for urology students in the program.

“As the days progressed I really became fascinated because I was doing something I was good at. I was helping people – not only the students but the community at large,” Lerman said. “Plus I was being paid crazy money.”

In a single day, Lerman said he made enough to cover several months’ rent for his apartment – a converted wine cellar of a mansion just below the second ‘O’ of the Hollywood sign. Stints as a patient surrogate, Lerman said, have also paid for a trip to Hawaii.

“I found out that the better you got at this and the more willing you were to be exposed, the more money you could make and the more in demand you could be,” he said.

Lerman said he initially stumbled across the service during his days in the entertainment industry when he heard rumors that Robert Rodriguez, the director of films such as “Sin City” and “Desperado,” had used earnings as a patient surrogate to finance his first film.

Curiosity piqued and comedy career ended, Lerman began to do his research on this apparently profitable possibility.

“Being a comedian for so many years it would have been hard in my twenties to start working nine to five,” he said.

He discovered an entire “underground economy” of willing and able human guinea pigs.

Once he participated in a few training sessions, the word spread, and Lerman found himself a hot commodity. He was recommended to similar programs at other medical schools around the state and country.

“What made him so good is that he made all the med students feel at ease,” DeVaney said.

“He always started his session off with a joke, and all the student I’ve ever talked to about him said he was terrific and he made it very easy for them,” DeVaney said.

DeVaney said he gets most of his recruits from advertisements in the Daily Bruin.

“There’s no specific requirements; we got all types of people – a lot of actors looking for extra income,” DeVaney said. “They just have to be willing to have medical students probe and prod them.”

Lerman has not stopped at urology exams, however. With a history of sleeping problems, he recently participated in a research trial in which his sleep patterns were observed for 10 days.

“It was like staying at a hotel,” he said. The most difficult things he had to do in those 10 days were decide what he wanted to order from the menu, and what movies he wanted to watch before lights out at 9 p.m.

He has also participated in clinical trials and pharmaceutical studies for various drugs.

The pharmaceutical companies have asked him to speak at forums and conventions of doctors and pharmacists, finding an invaluable resource in an articulate and knowledgeable patient who has had direct experience with the drug and is not afraid of the spotlight.

“It’s almost like getting a law degree from watching ‘Law and Order,’” Lerman said. “I can have incredibly intelligent discussions with medical professionals and they can’t believe I’ve never been to medical school.”

Lerman has also cultivated other expertise and methods of income.

“A great name for my life story is jackass of all trades,” he laughed.

Privy to a celebrity circle of sources from his days as a comedian, he works as a gossip columnist for tabloid magazines like The National Enquirer and Star.

“If you want to know who’s the worst tipper in Hollywood or what Britney wants to name her baby,” Lerman said, “I’m your guy.”

He also writes trivia questions for game shows, sports bars and Hooters trivia night.

But the 32-year-old can relish a rare pleasure others working odd jobs may not be privy to – the knowledge that he is in absolute good health. The benefits of being a patient surrogate definitely beat the pokes and the prods, Lerman said.

“I’ll probably do this indefinitely as long as I’m healthy and I enjoy it,” he said. “I don’t see that there’s any end in sight – maybe if I meet the woman of my dreams and my wife has an issue with it.”

In lieu of Howard Stern, Lerman has found a regular routine at the UCLA medical school – that is, until another love gets in the way.