Smile is the best remedy for any disease. But smiling becomes rare for children in hospitals. Things might be different if there is someone who can accompany children by playing all kinds of games with them. Fortunately, there is a job called medical clowns to turn fantasies into reality.
Invited by consulate general of Israel in Chengdu,two “clown doctors” from Israel, Avital Dvory and Shlomi Golan, visited Provincial People’s Hospital, West China Second University Hospital and Chengdu Women’s and Children’s hospital on Aug 7 and 9 to give patients a different kind of healing experience.
Dressed in colorful clown costumes and with big red noses, the two therapists sang songs, played ukulele, performed magic tricks and blew bubbles in the wards to cheer up the patients.
The clown doctors work for an association called “Dream Doctors”, in which specially trained clowns are sent to various different hospitals to help ease patients’ fear and pressure through medical operations. One of the parents interviewed said her child hadn’t smile for a very long time before the medical clowns came.
Both Dvory and Golan are veteran clown care experts with more than 10 years’ working experience. “In addition to medical knowledge such as nursing, psychology, physiotherapy and medical history, a professional clown doctor also needs to have experience in stage performance,” explained Dvory.
As a serious occupation, medical clowns were not widely welcomed at the beginning for distracting doctors during operations. However, medical clowns are now gaining more significance and have become an indispensable part of the medical field.
Dvory and Golan also visited hospitals in Yunnan, Chongqing and Guizhou.