Author: Megan

Five Dream Doctors presented at HCIM 2018 – The Art of Clowning: Connecting Culture, Health and Science Conference, which was held in Vienna, Austria earlier this month.

Amnon Raviv gave a workshop on building rapport with patients and lectured on the academic steps towards promoting medical clowning as a recognized profession.

Shoshi Ofir presented on the effects of therapeutic clowning on the neural development of babies born prematurely and also on the medical clown’s role in reducing anxiety during the invasive examinations of children after suspected sexual abuse.

Talia Safra gave presentations on incorporating medical clowns into the education system and how medical clowns can work with people with mental illness.

Yaron Sancho Goshen spoke about his experience as a medical clown in Nepal after the earthquake in 2015.

Avital Dvory taught a puppetry workshop and gave a lecture on accompanying children to surgery.

Dream Doctors Penny Hanuka and Vitaly Azarin gave a training at the Thalassemia Center, in collaboration with the Azerbaijan Medical University and Azerbaijan University of Culture and Art. While in Baku, “Fifi” and “Vovo” met with the First Vice President Mehriban Aliyeva, the Ambassador’s spouse Mrs. Gili Stav, DCM Mrs. Avital Rosenberg, and the Vice President of Heydar Aliyev Foundation Ms. Leyla Aliyeva. After completing their training with Penny and Vitaly, the students in Baku will be able to start visiting hospitals and helping patients overcome anxiety and fear during their treatments.

Dream Doctors Avi Cohen, Hagar Hofesh, David Barashi, Shira Sattler Friedlander, and Herzel Ziyoni represented the Dream Doctors Project at this year’s AIPAC Policy Conference in Washington, DC. Over the course of three days we met hundreds of people in our booth who were excited about our mission and it was such a treat for us to get to know so many wonderful people from all across the US! And we were honored to receive a standing ovation from an audience of 18,000 people during our presentation on the main stage. We invite you all to watch this 1 minute clip with behind the scenes footage of our time at the conference.

We are ecstatic to announce that the Dream Doctors Research Fund Sponsored by Moose Toys recently awarded grants to 5 research teams from hospitals and academic institutions across Israel. Their projects will look at the use of medical clowns in treating child patients from a variety of different angles that have never been studied before and the results will directly inform how we work with children in the hospitals.

We are so grateful to our partners at Moose Toys for supporting research that will help make children happy when they are the most in need of comfort and laughter!

Mazel tov to Dr. Vered Nir and her team, whose research has just been published!

Dream Doctors Vitaly Azarin​, Javier Katz, and Katerina Teplizki were an important part of the study, which showed that the presence of medical clowns improved the performance of pulmonary function tests for preschoolers.

Assistance of Medical Clowns Improves the Physical Examinations of Children Aged 2–6 Years

Dr. Noam Meiri​, Dream Doctors Amichi Ankri and Itay Nahmias​, and a team of researchers from the Technion evaluated the use of medical clowns during the examinations of young children in the Emergency Room.

In addition to finding that the presence of a medical clown improved the ability of 94% of participating pediatricians to conduct a complete examination and determine pathological findings, 95% of the caregivers accompanying their children to the ER reported that they would request a medical clown during their child’s future exams.

Medical clowning crosses all boundaries: language, religion, and culture

This moving clip from Israel’s Channel 10 news tells the story (in Hebrew) of 3 year old Asil from Gaza who, during three months of treatment at Barzilai Medical Center, formed a close bond with the medical team, including Dream Doctor Hagar Hofesh.

We applaud the medical staff at Barzilai and Dream Doctor “Mimi” for their compassionate care and we wish Asil a fast and full recovery!