Students of Ivano-Frankivsk National Medical University held a Teddy Bear Hospital action at Ivano-Frankivsk Oblast Children’s Clinical Hospital in June 2009.
Teddy Bear Hospital is a project run by medical students within the European Medical Students Association in many European countries: Portugal, the Netherlands, Poland, Germany, Sweden, etc. Its goal is to make it easier for children to deal with doctors, raising in them responsibility and care, and making parents understand the need to prevent diseases.
There exists a problem in our society regarding medical aid for children. Its main reason is not the lack of doctors’ skills or medical equipment, but the lack of understanding by parents of the need for medical aid for children, especially small ones. Often parents fail to completely understand the child’s complaints, and sometimes they don’t realize the need for early medical aid or disease prevention service. As a result, many children are admitted to hospital in grave condition, which prolongs the time needed for treatment, demands for more intensive therapy, longer stay at the hospital and rehabilitation period, which stresses out children, making them scared of treatment and doctors. Thus, the most interesting for children and appropriate for parents way to discuss this problem is a game, where children aged 5-9, teddy bears, and medical students play their respective roles: teddy bears are ‘children,’ children are their ‘parents,’ and med students play doctors. The game allows dealing with two problems simultaneously: decrease children’s fear of hospitals and give parents a chance to analyze their children’s behavior in game, watch them recreating a disease through a teddy bear.
First, children with teddies familiarize themselves with the clinic’s structure, doctors’ specializations and medical tools sets. ‘Moms and dads’ come to the reception, where they get medical history sheets and are told which doctor they should attend. But first of all they have to comfort their ‘babies,’ explaining to them that treatment is necessary and there’s nothing to be scared of.
Children with teddies go through examination, diagnostic, disease prevention, and treatment procedures. The future doctors have found out that children are mostly afraid of surgeons, trauma specialists, and dentists. These doctors’ tools look the scariest to them. However, in a few minutes, having examined and touched the ‘scary dentist’s thingies,’ the kids are already explaining to their teddies what the doctor is going to do and how, to make their little teeth strong and healthy. Most willingly the kids approach physicians and pediatricians, toying with phonendoscopes and listening to their own breathing and heart rhythm.
After the game is finished, the children are left with their teddy bears as keepsakes of the Teddy Bear Hospital, and also with best memories of their visit to the hospital.
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