Clown doctor

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

A clown doctor or clinic clown is a clown (trained actor) who appears in hospitals and care institutions in order to give sick people hope and courage through humor . The appearance usually takes place in teams of two who always work closely with the nursing staff.

A group of clown doctors in the Bambin Gesù hospital in Rome (December 2005)

description

Under the motto “Laughter is the best medicine”, the attempt is made to improve the emotional situation of the patient, which is often associated with boredom and desolation. The aim of the clowns is to loosen up the often dreary clinic atmosphere. You want to make patients laugh and thus contribute to their faster recovery. This variety of therapeutic humor is now also being scientifically researched under the term clown therapy. In a study at an Israeli clinic, for example, it was observed that the percentage of successful in vitro fertilizations increased from 20% to 36% with visits to clown doctors.

history

The clown doctors go back to an idea of ​​the American clown, juggler and co-founder of the Big Apple Circus (New York City Circus) Michael Christensen (* 1947). In 1986 he developed "clown doctoring" and founded the "Big Apple Circus Clown Care", an organization within the Big Apple Circus that sent clowns to children's clinics. This method quickly became internationally popular, so in 1991 the association CliniClowns was founded in Austria , which carried out the first clown visits in Europe. In 1993 the brothers Jan and André Poulie founded the Theodora Foundation in Switzerland , in 1994 the Clown Doctors eV association was established in Germany and the Rote Nasen Clowndoctors association in Austria . In Germany there has been a nationwide umbrella organization, "Clowns in Medicine and Care Germany eV", since 2004, in which 16 clinic clown associations are organized, which together represent 240 clowns (status 4/2019). A foundation was established by the doctor and comedian Eckart von Hirschhausen , which networks donors and actors in the clinic clown scene and organizes further training for doctors, nurses and clowns.

literature

Scientific papers

Books

  • Anja Doehring and Ulrich Renz : What I want is a clown. Clinic clowns on the children's ward , Beltz Verlag, Weinheim 2003, ISBN 3-407-55884-8 , E-Book Sefa Verlag, Lübeck 2014, ISBN 3-945090-23-7
  • Ulrich Fey: Clowns for people with dementia. The potential of a comic art , Mabuse-Verlag Frankfurt / M., 3rd expanded edition 2016, ISBN 978-3-86321-015-1
  • Ulrich Fey: Really strange. When clowns visit children in the hospital, Mabuse-Verlag Frankfurt / M. 2018, ISBN 978-3-86321-387-9

Web links

Wiktionary: Clown doctor  - explanations of meanings, word origins, synonyms, translations
Commons : Clown care  - collection of pictures, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. Entry on Clowndoktor in Flexikon , a Wiki of the DocCheck company , accessed on September 3, 2010.
  2. S. Friedler et al. The effect of medical clowning on pregnancy rates after in vitro fertilization and embryo transfer (IVF-ET). In: Fertility and Sterility . No. 95, 6. 2011 ( doi: 10.1016 / j.fertnstert.2010.12.016 ) p. 2127-2130. [1]
  3. Laughter may increase probability of IVF pregnancy, study finds (Reuters) [2]
  4. Big appel circus: Clown care ( Memento of the original from September 21, 2010 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. ; accessed on Sep. 3. 2010 @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.bigapplecircus.org
  5. CliniClowns Austria ( Memento of the original from December 19, 2007 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. ; accessed on Sep 4. 2010 @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.cliniclowns.at
  6. Die Clown Doctors e. V .: The association, history ; Retrieved on Aug 11, 2012
  7. Rote Nasen Clowndoctors Austria ; accessed on Sep 4. 2010
  8. http://www.dachverband-clowns.de/ accessed on August 1, 2014
  9. ^ Foundation "Humor Hilft Heilen" gGmbH