Soroka Medical Center - Bring on the Clowns!

The program of bringing laughter to sick children at Israel's Soroka Medical Center via medical clowns has now been running for a year, thanks to a grant from philanthropist Mouli Cohen. A team of professional clowns specially selected for their ability to work with children in a hospital environment have been at work in the Soroka pediatric inpatient and intensive care units, outpatient clinics, acute-care waiting rooms, and in its physical therapy, bone marrow transplant, burns and pediatric AIDS units, reminding young patients that they are more than just their illness.

Working in tandem with the hospital's medical staff, Soroka's clowns introduce fun and laughter as natural parts of everyday life for the children and their parents, and help ease the stress of serious illness.

A stay in hospital for a child is often characterized by fear, uncertainty and pain. The objectives of the clowns program are as follows:

To introduce joy and hope into what is generally a milieu of anxiety and illness.
To bring humor, laughter, dreams and fantasy to help children to get through their stay in hospital.
To reinforce the motivation of each child to fight the illness, and help the child endure the different treatments s/he is receiving, with the minimum of anxiety and fear.
To alleviate, if only briefly, the stress and anguish of the families of the hospitalized children, and to grant them a moment of relaxation and laughter with their children.
To bring quality support to the caregivers whose job is charged with emotion and stress.
To show the caregivers how to lighten the atmosphere in the wards, and how to introduce humor, laughter and fantasy into their work routines with children.

The team of clowns is made up of artists trained in theater, street theatre, circus, as conjurors, mime artists and dancers. There is nothing so serious as knowing how to make a child who is suffering laugh!

The clown team works according to fixed hours in coordination with the hospital staff. A close working relationship is developed between the clowns and the caregivers, both of whom must commit to regular staff meetings at times convenient to both parties. The essential objective of these meetings is to discuss subjects relating to the clowns in the hospital, to share successes and problems, in short, to establish working principles and cooperation.

The team of clowns has ongoing training throughout the year in order to improve its work in the hospital. Every two months, a session is held to discuss the needs of the team.

The first year, according to the testimony of the doctors and nurses who integrated the project into their services, as well as the hospitalized children and their parents, was deemed a great success. Although a year is a relatively short time for a program to take hold, Pediatrics Chairman Prof. Joseph Press speaks for all his staff when he says, "No doubt that the medical clowns have a significant part in the child's healing process, and sometimes somehow even make it pleasant."

This terrific program is now in need of additional support to continue. Please consider making a donation by visiting our web page.

"The appearance of a good clown is of far greater benefit to the health of a community than twenty years of handing out medication"

(Thomas Sydenham, medieval philosopher)