How ‘giggle doctors’ help sick children
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Caspar Addyman, Goldsmiths, University of London
Hospitals are not fun for any of us. But imagine being trapped in a hospital bed as a young child, perhaps with a serious condition that requires multiple extended visits. Staff on children’s wards do their best to entertain their patients but their first priority, of course, is always medical.
This is where “giggle doctors” come in. These professional entertainers are trained and paid to go round hospitals to cheer up children with music and laughter. As a researcher interested in the benefits of laughter, I am fascinated by the work giggle doctors do and how it might make a difference to sick and disabled children. But as a scientist I am also challenged as to how we might measure these effects.
Every year there are around 1m hospital admissions of children under 15, many of them serious and extended. With their tiny team of just 25 giggle doctors, Theodora Children’s Charity is able to visit 33,000 of these chi...
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