Playing a unique role in healthcare

Dream Doctors are professional medical clowns who work as members of medical teams in 31 hospitals across Israel to improve patient care, ease the stress of illness, and advance therapeutic outcomes.  Dream Doctors work hand-in-hand with doctors and nurses in regular weekly shifts,  usually in the morning when the majority of medical procedures take place.  They assist and accompany children in more than 40 different medical procedures such as blood tests, surgeries, injections and burn therapies, among others.

Dream Doctors are professional performing artists who undergo extensive training to work inside hospitals.  Dream Doctors employ a wide variety of skills and techniques to help relieve tension and anxiety among patients as well as gain a sense of personal control.  These include creating distractions; role playing; acting out suppressed desires, anger or frustration; imagining alternative realities, and more.  Dream Doctors approach every patient with remarkable sensitivity, taking into consideration their individual needs based on their condition, situation, and treatment.

Areas of specialization

Dream Doctors specialize in areas such as autism, sexual abuse, oncology, burn treatment, trauma and PTSD, resiliency,  nephrology, NICU, child development, rehabilitation, dementia, geriatrics, mental health, youth-at-risk, among others.

Populations Served

Dream Doctors provide specialized care to over 200, 000 child and adult patients a year including preemie babies, youth-at-risk, victims of sexual assault, veterans, and communities in trauma, among others.  They serve all of Israel’s diverse population, regardless of race, religious, cultural or socio-economic backgrounds and  play a unique role in facilitating cross-cultural liaisons mediating across religious, ethnic and national lines.

Research-Proven Methods

Dream Doctors research-proven methods demonstrate that medical clowning significantly improves the well-being of hospitalized children and patients.  Benefits include lowered perception of pain, reduced need for sedation, accelerated recovery time, alleviation of anxiety and depression, greater compliance and better therapeutic outcomes.

Watch them in action

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About

Based on two decades of experience working hand-in-hand with medical teams across Israel and as part of humanitarian missions around the world, Dream Doctors offer specialized expertise in the field of the medical clowning.  Dream Doctors combine a rich toolbox of professional skills that include street theatre, clowning techniques, performance arts, current medical and nursing practices and therapeutic care.  In Israel, DD training modules are now a part of the standard curriculum at two leading medical schools.  Dream Doctors are asked to lecture at medical, emergency relief and trauma-related conferences across the globe.  All DD training programs reflect the organization’s core values of compassion, generosity, care and respect for human life- regardless of a person’s religion, race, gender, age or cultural background.

Customized Training

Dream Doctors offer a wide range of customized online and in-person training and workshops, adapted to meet the needs and interests of communities from around the world.

Target Audiences

• healthcare workers
• educators
• social workers and therapists
• students
• humanitarian organisations
• professional clowning associations
• community and volunteer groups around the world

In Partnership with Israel’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs

The Dream Doctors Project was nominated by Israel’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs to represent Israel abroad in a range of international conferences and venues.

Sample Training Topics:

• History of therapeutic medical ‘clowning’ and benefits for patients
• The importance of patient well-being in the advancement of healthcare delivery
• The role of the medical clown within the hospital’s medical team
• Evidence-based practice: an overview of scientific research about the benefits of therapeutic clowning

Applied skills:

• Improve communication with patients through therapeutic ‘clowning’
• The use of ‘clowning’ techniques for intervention with traumatized populations
• Trust-building exercises to improve group dynamics with teams and patients
• Tools to facilitate ‘burnout relief’ among staff members

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Our brave Dream Doctors are in Chisinau, Moldova for the week to provide vital humanitarian relief to Ukrainian refugees.

Dream Doctors are providing vital trauma intervention and innovative therapeutic clowning techniques to children and adults who were forced to flee their homes following Russia’s invasion.  The Dream Team is on a mission to reach the vast number of refugees flooding absorption centers in Chisinau, as well as thousands more who are still stuck at the Moldova-Ukraine border crossing area.

Dream Doctors are not only multi-talented artists, they are highly skilled members of medical teams in 34 hospitals across Israel and have extensive experience working in humanitarian relief missions to disaster zones around the world.

“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.

 Support Dream Doctors Emergency Relief Efforts for Ukrainian refugees- Click Here to Donate Now!

In Times of Crisis

Dream Doctors specialize in crisis intervention and treating people in trauma during times of emergency and disaster.  Following successful collaboration with the Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) on humanitarian relief missions around the world, the IDF decided to make Dream Doctors official members of reserve duty in 2015.   Since then, Dream Doctors are called upon for reserve duty in IDF humanitarian relief missions.  They are regarded as regular military soldiers for all intent and purposes and receive specialized training to help people and communities in times of crisis. .

Dream Doctors have travelled to disaster zones around the world including Nepal, Haiti, Uganda, Ethiopia and Chad, among others.  Dream Doctors were also in Houston after Hurricane Irma, Pittsburgh after the 2018 synagogue shooting, and in the Bahamas following the major earthquake in 2019.  In 2018, Israel’s Foreign Ministry sponsored a unique training opportunity for Dream Doctors to coach a team of Yazidis from Iraq- a group that was  severely victimized by ISIS- in the art of medical clowning.

In 2020, Dream Doctors are on the front-lines of COVID-19 working hand-in-hand with medical teams in all aspects of the pandemic.  Per hospital request, Dream Doctors were called upon to help coronavirus patients battling severe loneliness and alienation.  They responded without hesitation and  bravely stepped up to the challenge and are the only medical clowns in the world working inside corona wards.

READ MORE about the Dream Doctors who worked with patients at the IDF field hospital in earthquake-stricken Kathmandu and helped spread happiness in Nepal.

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In 2011, the Dream Doctors Project’s First International Conference on Medicine and Medical Clowning was held in Jerusalem.  Dream Doctors hosted 250 guests from 22 countries, including medical clowns, representatives of medical clowning associations from around the world, physicians, and nurses. Several medical studies on the issue of medical clowning were presented, making it clear that there was a need for additional scientific studies to build an evidence-based foundation for medical clowns’ contribution to patient well-being and health.

  Consequently, 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: Prof. Arthur Eidelman currently serves as Chairman and is joined by Prof. Annick Raas-Rothschild, Dr. Yitzhak Berlovich, Prof. Myriam Ben Arush, and the founder of the Dream Doctors Project, Yaacov Shriqui. To date, 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.

Inside Academia

Dedicated to advancing the field of medical clowning and gaining official recognition as a paramedical profession, integration into academia is a part of the Project’s overall mission.  The first university in the world to offer a full BA program in Medical Clowning was at Haifa University, with approximately 40 program graduates.   In addition, senior Dream Doctor, Amnon Raviv, is the first person in the world to earn a Ph.D. in medical clowning.

Currently, Dream Doctors offer educational training to soon-to-be doctors and nurses in academic programs as part of the academic course curriculum at the Safed branch of Bar Ilan University and at the Technion University in Haifa.  These courses lay the foundation for fully integrating Dream Doctors with hospital medical teams.  Students learn about the clown’s therapeutic role and value inside hospitals.  They are introduced to the art of medical clowning and learn communication skills that help cultivate a better relationship with patients.  Courses include full-day seminars that include lectures, interactive simulations, and observation of the clowns in action inside hospitals.  Courses are taught by DD clowns, together with Prof. Edelman, Head of the Dream Doctors Research Fund.

Published studies sponsored by the Dream Doctors Research Fund can be found at the links below:

• Relieving pain and distress in outpatient burn clinic: The contribution of the medical clown- 2021
• Medical Clown Support is Associated with Better Quality of Life of Children with Food Allergy Starting Oral Immunotherapy -2021
• Intervention of Medical (Therapeutic) Clowns in a Kindergarten for Children with Intellectual Disability: A Case Study – 2018
• The effect of medical clowns on performance of spirometry among preschool aged children – 2018
• Disaster Zones – Should We Be Clowning Around? – 2018
• Assistance of Medical Clowns Improves the Physical Examinations of Children Aged 2–6 Years – 2017
• A cross-cultural perspective of medical clowning: comparison of its effectiveness in reducing pain and anxiety among hospitalized Bedouin and Jewish Israeli children – 2017
• Fear of clowns in hospitalized children: prospective experience – 2017
• Clown-care reduces pain in children with cerebral palsy undergoing recurrent botulinum toxin injections- A quasi-randomized controlled crossover study – 2017
• Medical Clowns and Cortisol levels in Children Undergoing Venipuncture in the Emergency Department: A Pilot Study – 2016
• Medical clowns reduce pre-operative anxiety, post-operative pain and medical costs in children undergoing outpatient penile surgery: A randomised controlled trial – 2016
• Dream Doctor Intervention Instead of Sedation: Performing Radionuclide Scanning Without Sedation in Young Children: A Study in 142 Patient – 2016
• The Therapy Beneath the Fun: Medical Clowning During Invasive Examinations on Children – 2016
• Seriously clowning: Medical clowning interaction with children undergoing invasive examinations in hospitals – 2016
• The effect of medical clowning on reducing pain, crying, and anxiety in children aged 2-10 years old undergoing venous blood drawing–a randomized controlled study – 2016
• Medical Clowns Facilitate Nitrous Oxide Sedation during Intra-Articular Corticosteroid Injection for Juvenile Idiopathic Arthritis – 2014
• Medical clowns ease anxiety and pain perceived by children undergoing allergy prick skin tests – 2014
• The effect of a medical clown on pain during intravenous access in the pediatric emergency department: a randomized prospective pilot study – 2013
• The Use of Medical Clowns as a Psychological Distress Buffer During Anogenital Examination of Sexually Abused Children – 2012
• The effect of medical clowning on pregnancy rates after in vitro fertilization and embryo transfer (IVF-ET) – 2011

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