Clown visits could reduce time children spend in hospital

Children and teens with pneumonia spend less time in the hospital if they are visited by a medical clown who helps them lower their heart rate and encourages independence.

Visits from a medical clown, who can help children with role-playing or distract them during treatment, have previously been linked to Reducing stress and anxiety levels among young people in hospital.

Now, Karin Jacobi-Bianu at the Carmel Medical Center in Haifa, Israel, and her colleagues specifically studied their effects on children hospitalized with pneumonia, an inflammation of the lungs.

The team randomly assigned 26 children and adolescents aged 2 to 18 with pneumonia, who will be visited by medical clowns for 15 minutes, twice a day, for two days after arriving at the centre. Another 25 children and adolescents received the same care, but were not visited by clowns.

The clowns sang and played music with the participants, and encouraged them to eat and drink on their own. “They were given fluids and nutrients through tubes at first,” Yaacobi-Bianu says.

The team found that those who were visited by clowns stayed at the centre for an average of 44 hours, while those who were not visited by clowns were hospitalised for 70 hours. The findings were presented at the European Respiratory Society Congress in Vienna, Austria.

Doctors, who didn't know which patients were receiving the clown's care, decided when to discharge them based on improvements in their breathing and heart rate, as well as their ability to eat and drink on their own. The latter suggests they could take antibiotic pills at home rather than having the drugs injected into their veins, Yaacobi-Bianu says.

The clowns likely helped the participants recover through play, what can lower blood pressurespeaks Kelsey Graber at the University of Cambridge. “Play can also improve young people's well-being, their mood, their energy levels and their sense of confidence and ability in their bodies,” she says.

Researchers should repeat the study in a larger group of children and adolescents with a variety of conditions at other hospitals, Graber said.