Humour sans frontieres: the feasibility of providing clown care at a distance.
No Thumbnail Available
Date
2011-05-26
Journal Title
Journal ISSN
Volume Title
Publisher
Abstract
Clown care has been shown to have health related benefits and is a well established part of the routine in many children s hospitals However children who have been admitted to general hospitals or who are being cared for at home cannot usually enjoy visits by Clown Doctors Therefore the aim of this work was to investigate whether an existing telemedicine network could be used to improve equity of access to humor for sick children specifically those who are hospitalized away from the nearest clown enabled hospital or who are being cared for at home Using videoconferencing we conducted regular clown outreach links from The Royal Children s Hospital in Brisbane Australia to children in regional hospitals and to sick children in their homes Using a program of performance which was modified for delivery by videoconference teleclowning was found to be feasible Further work is required to determine whether the health related benefits that accrue from in person clowning are successfully translated to the video based modality