Clown visits may shorten the amount of time children spend in hospital

Children and teenagers with pneumonia appear to spend less time in the hospital when they are visited by medical clowns, who can help lower their heart rates and encourage them to live independently.

Visits by medical clowns may help children role-play or distract themselves during treatment, which has previously been linked to Reducing stress and anxiety in hospitalized young people.

Now, Karin Jacobi Bianu Researchers at Carmel Medical Center in Haifa, Israel, and colleagues specifically looked at the effects of these drugs on children hospitalized for pneumonia (inflammation of the lungs).

The research team randomly assigned 26 children and adolescents aged 2 to 18 with pneumonia to receive visits from a medical clown twice a day for 15 minutes until two days after their arrival at the center. Another 25 children and adolescents received the same care but without the visits from the clown.

The clowns sang and played music with the participants and encouraged them to eat and drink on their own. “They initially received fluids and nutrients through a tube,” Iacobi-Bianu said.

The research team found that patients who received a clown visit stayed in the center for an average of 44 hours, while those who did not receive a clown visit stayed in the center for 70 hours. The results were presented at the European Respiratory Society Congress in Vienna, Austria.

Doctors, who don’t know which patients are receiving clown care, decide when to discharge them based on improvements in their breathing and heart rates, as well as their ability to eat and drink on their own. The latter indicates they can take antibiotic pills at home instead of drugs given intravenously, Jacobi-Bianu said.

The clown may help participants recover through the game. Can lower blood pressure,explain Kelsey Graber at the University of Cambridge. “Play can also improve young people’s well-being, mood, energy levels, and confidence in their own bodies and abilities,” she said.

Graber said the researchers should repeat the study in other hospitals with larger groups of children and adolescents with different medical conditions.