It’s not easy for a child in the hospital. Away from home, your toys, your loved ones, your familiar and safe surroundings. In the hospital, they experience trauma – bitter medications, injections, and difficult tests await them, which sometimes terrify young patients. There is also concern and even sadness of parents, doctors and nurses that the little person also has to deal with. There’s also quite a lot of boredom in the hospital. It is difficult for children to survive this time without stress. What is the best cure for this? It turns out to be a laugh!
Joy therapy
Medical laughter is therapy. However, it is just ordinary laughter, but in a hospital, or even in a hospital bed. Laughter and a positive attitude are medicine that have a beneficial effect on the healing process. This is proven by scientific research, according to which the presence of clowns can even replace the need to administer pharmacological agents before an MRI examination, because it reduces patients’ stress and fear. Playing with a clown before a planned procedure makes children feel happier, calmer and less worried about the surgery after just 15 minutes. Why is laughter so beneficial?
This is confirmed by human physiology. When a person laughs, the level of “happiness hormones”, i.e. serotonin, oxytocin and endorphins, increases, and the level of the “stress hormone”, i.e. cortisol, decreases. When parents see a laughing child, they feel relieved and laugh at the clowns themselves.
This method is becoming more and more common in pediatric departments in Poland and abroad.
There are no limits to your smile!
Artists from the Czerwone Noski Foundation are medical clowns, i.e. prepared and trained to work in hospitals and at the bedside. The therapy combines elements of cabaret, music and improvisation, which is exactly what we know from the circus. The clown distracts attention from the disease and makes the child the center of attention. He puts on a show, sings songs, and plays with the child.
The Red Noses Team are the only artists in the country who have the opportunity to accompany young patients in the operating theater, where parents no longer enter. Often it is the clown who holds the child’s hand just before the anesthesia is administered.
Now Czerwone Noski is taking part in the PGE Foundation’s Christmas project. For 5 weeks, clowns visit children at the Children’s Health Center in Warsaw, the Budzik Clinic, the Specialist Mother and Child Health Care Team in Poznań, the University Children’s Hospital in Krakow, and the Polanki Children’s Hospital. M. Płażyński in Gdańsk, as well as in the Cape of Hope Clinic in Wrocław and in the Provincial Specialist Hospital. J. Gromkowski. Medical clowns from Czerwone Noski are also present in the most severe oncology wards.
License to make people laugh
The PGE Foundation also provided laughter therapy to seniors, residents of social care homes. Clowns from the Czerwone Noski Foundation visit selected nursing homes in Warsaw, Krakow and Wrocław with their artistic repertoire.
In the case of older people, a medical clown not only supports the healing process or reduces pain, but also allows you to forget about loneliness for a moment. Visits to nursing homes are a break from the daily routine for residents. The loneliness of seniors is associated with pain, longing and an unmet need for closeness. Clowns sing songs from the old days, sometimes they initiate fun gymnastics. It’s a time full of smiles, warm hugs and kind words.
The most important thing in working with seniors is meeting other people – offering attention, smiles and warmth. Medical clowns are actors, musicians, magicians, and often also people with psychological training. Humor in medicine has many faces – for the PGE Foundation it has a face with a red nose.
The partner of the material is PGE Polska Grupa Energetyczna
