• E-mail
• Print
• RSS

Tips from TSE: Start clowning around to connect with patients

Staff Development Weekly: Insight on Evidence-Based Practice in Education, February 6, 2009

Want to receive articles like this one in your inbox? Subscribe to Staff Development Weekly: Insight on Evidence-Based Practice in Education!

Nurses frequently become wrapped up in making sure their technical skills are done by the book, so they miss a chance to connect with patients, says Betty Leef, MSN, RN, a full-time faculty instructor at the New York University College of Nursing. That’s why Leef sent her nursing students to clown school.

After observing clowns from the Big Apple Circus at work in the city’s pediatric units, Leef says she admired both the clowns’ abilities to assess a patient’s emotional state and their skill at creating a connection, and wanted her students to have those same skills. Leef connected with Michael Christensen, co-founder and creative director of the Big Apple Circus, and sent nursing students to Christensen’s clown care program. The result was eight workshops run over the course of the fall semester, with groups of 16 and 18 students participating in each one. The workshops were heavily based on a concept that most nursing students may have forgotten.

“All of it is in the spirit of play. We play games, and people are accessed through the spirit of game play and having fun,” Christensen says.

One exercise challenged the students to read the emotional climate of the room, he says. One student is sent outside the room, and while he or she is outside, the rest gather to decide on an emotion that they’ll all portray. It may be relaxed, silly, annoyed, or just about any other emotion that a patient may feel while hospitalized. When the one student is allowed back into the room, he or she must use his or her assessment skills to figure out how the room is feeling.

Editor’s note: This excerpt was adapted from the February issue of The Staff Educator. Discover all the benefits of subscribing to The Staff Educator!

Want to receive articles like this one in your inbox? Subscribe to Staff Development Weekly: Insight on Evidence-Based Practice in Education!

• Comment
• E-mail to a Colleague
• Print
• RSS
• Archive

Comments