Imaging putting in a grueling 12 hour shift, working the wards at hospital, going about your daily routine of diagnosing people and giving them care to recover from their illness or to help them deal with their problems.
If that does not sound hard enough, imagine finishing that shift, and instead of going home for some much needed relaxation, or to give time to your family, putting in extra hours voluntarily.
It might sounds like masochism, but it isn't. This is what the Klown Doctors do twice a week. The goal behind the Klown Doctor project is to make very sick children happy, and to alleviate some of the stress that their parents go through when they are in hospital, or at the resident hospice. They don their makeup, put on their big red nose and set out to bring some much needed humour and lightness to children who are very sick. It is one of the most noble gestures that one could make.
In an interview with this newspaper, the Klown Doctors explained that the choice is easy. They say that the simple fact of making a sick child smile, or to be able to take their and their parents'minds of what is going on around them, even for ten minutes is more than enough reward. What a truly altruistic mentality. If only we had more people like them in Malta and Gozo, we would truly live in a better place.
There is still the misconception that one needs to have medical background in order to become a clown doctor. But that is not the case. Anyone can become a Klown Doctor, and the purpose of this leading article is to make it known that if people want to contribute in this way, then they can.
Clown Doctors need to undergo some intense and rigorous training, both artistically and psychologically. Training courses extend over a year, and members need to qualify to proceed from one phase to another.
We need to encourage more of these activities, and in addition, we also need to look at other forms of therapy that might make patients lives easier. What about therapy animals, for example? It works abroad, and so, it should also work here. Therapy animals are used at day respite centres for children with disabilities and we should expand our horizons even further. Cats, lapdogs, bunnies... turtles, even... are used in other countries around the world to try and alleviate pain, stress and the humdrum life that people have to put up with when they are confined to hospital. And we should not stop with children either. Such therapy has also proven to work in soothing and helping elderly people who might be suffering from a terminal disease. It has also proved to help people who suffer with dementia. Medicine has a vital role to play in keeping people healthy, or making their lives a bit more bearable when the end approaches. But we can also do the same, just by helping people lift their mood.