THE DREAM DOCTOR PROJECT: CLOWNS HELPING PATIENTS
Published by: Carlo Sadocco
“This mission is not a first for Dream Doctors. It’s Israel. It’s part of our DNA to be wherever we are needed,” said Tsour Shriqui, CEO of Dream Doctors.
Dream Doctors are professional medical clowns who work as members of medical teams in 31 hospitals across Israel to improve patient care, helping them decrease their stress and increase their happiness. Among these ‘Dream Doctors’ are artists and actors who employ a wide variety of skills and techniques to fight tension and anxiety among patients. They approach every patient with sensitivity, taking into consideration their individual needs based on their condition, situation, and treatment. The team specializes in numerous areas such as autism, sexual abuse, trauma and PTSD. They provide specialized care to over 200 thousand child and adult patients a year including preemie babies, victims of sexual assault, veterans and others
Emergency
A part of the ‘Dream Doctors’ team is now in Chisinau, Moldova to help Ukrainian refugees by providing innovative therapeutic clowning techniques to children and adults. They have provided help on many other occasions such as Houston after Hurricane Irma, Pittsburgh after the synagogue shooting and in the Bahamas after an enormous earthquake. One of the last emergencies happened in 2020 with the coronavirus pandemic, when they attended covid patients to give them support and help them feel better
Research
This discipline is still undergoing various developments. A Scientific Research Fund was established to provide grants each year for research on medical clowning. The fund is overseen by the Scientific Committee, which is made up of five members. This fund has supported over 42 research studies on various topics in the field of medical clowning and presented at international conferences; 24 have been published in scientific journals.
Becoming a Dream Doctor
‘Dream Doctor’ requires you to have experience in fields such as street theatre, physical theatre and pantomime; instead, to become a volunteer you must attend a training session to adapt your skills to the medical setting.
Through the Dream Doctor project website, you can contact the team and apply to try this experience in Israel hospitals. To support the project you can follow them on their website and in social media ( Facebook, Youtube and Instagram). It is also possible to donate to this project through their website page.