Vantagens da presença dos doutores palhaços no contexto hospitalar: as expectativas dos profissionais de pediatria

Abstract

Focused on interventions that - affiliated to the hospitals’ humanization process - search for the augmentation of children’s quality of life inside the hospital, and the minimization of the negative effects of this experience on their welfare and development, special attention is given to interventions that combine art, play, and humor. Music, storytelling, magic and clowns are examples of these interventions. Amongst them, the authors emphasize the work of “Operação Nariz Vermelho”, a 10 years Portuguese association of professional clowns. In 2010 “Operação Nariz Vermelho” invested on a 12th partner: Hospital de Braga. Simultaneously, an additional challenge was initiated: the research project “Rir é o melhor remédio?” (resulting from a research protocol with the Minho University’s Institute of Education), aimed at the study of the Clown Doctors’ interventions. To begin with, a two-stage study was designed. The first stage (one month before starting intervention in this pediatric unit) -, focused on the evaluation of staff’s expectations regarding clowns’ intervention and, at a second stage (still running), their representations around the clowns’ work two years after observing and cooperating with them. Main results of the first stage (34 professionals’ interviews) are presented, as well as the second stage’s preliminary results. Data show that, in a first stage, the staff shows considerable interest and openness regarding the presence of clowns in their unit, and regarding the possibility of working together. Several advantages for the children, parents, pediatric staff, and to the hospital itself were foreseen, for example: the clowns’ moderating impact on the children’s’ internment experience; more cooperation with routines and procedures, or the facilitation of family-staff communication. The children’s fear of clowns; the interpretation of CDs’ presence as “childish” (for teens), and/or a “lack of respect” for the disease and the children’s (and families) suffering were anticipated as main difficulties.