clowns in medical school

Another branch of Pallapupas' integration strategy is their university course. Pallapupas run a 3rd year elective for medical students at the Universidad de Barcelona.

The first session is a lecture by Xaví on Pallapupas, its beginnings, its mission, values etc. The end of this session is interrupted by 2 members of the Pallpupas team. The students immediately get a sense of why the programme works.

The next sessions consist of role playing medical procedures without and then with clowns being present.

The rest of the sessions are a kind of intro clown workshop that gives the medical students tools to be open, imaginative, playful and confident in their interactions with the children on the ward.  At the end, the doctors will have started to discover their own 'inner clown'.

Pallaupupas are really committed to the idea that people can experience their illness in a different and more 'healthy' way.  Xaví would like it that one day, there would be no need for hospital clowns, becasue the medical environment and staff, and attitudes of the patients and parents would have evolved so that they could live their illness through a different lens - one of play and laughter and imagination.

I think that might be wishful thinking - but only because this hospital isn't about to give them up!