What can clowns teach doctors about connection?

Hospital staff really want to help their patients, but in complex, stressful situations they can sometimes lose touch with the shared human spirit, says Kiwi theatre performer Phoebe Mason, who works as a clown doctor.

After a recent workshop, one leading paediatrician made light of her own fumble for the first time - and delivered the distraught mum of a sick baby her first laugh in days, Mason tells Culture 101.

"A big part of clown doctoring is that mistakes in communication and interpersonal relationships are this amazing opportunity for honesty and connection and silliness."

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Although Patch Adams (made famous by the 1998 Robin Williams film) is both a clown and an actual physician, she and the other clown doctors employed by the Humour Foundationcharity are usually professional performers, like her, with specialised training, Mason says.

In pairs, they visit a range of healthcare settings including hospitals, aged care, in-patient mental health and blood testing labs.

Mason's speciality age group is young people aged 18 and under, who she often visits at burns units with her tools of the trade, including a ukulele and pockets full of small toys, magic tricks and curious objects.

Recently, she placed some of these objects in front of a nine-year-old boy getting the dressings on his burnt hands changed, and he immediately started making up a story about a wind-up toy chicken and a tiny plastic hamburger fighting each other to take over the world.

“Our role is to support and nurture and maintain what has gone right with that child - what that child loves, what gives them a twinkle in their eye.”

To share with medical professionals the "soft skills" that clown doctors use to spark genuine connection, The Humour Foundation is offering workshops that focus on self awareness, curiosity and playfulness, Mason says.

"Play is something we all do all the time. We banter with our friends, we joke with someone at the bus stop, and that is all versions of play. Adults can put up little walls that say, ‘I don't play anymore. I used to do that. I've grown out of it or something’.

“It's a deep belief of ours as clown doctors that play is a core part of how we all connect with each other.”

At children's hospitals, there are many people in extreme distress, but Mason says it's crucial that she never forgets what she's there to do.

"I can't do my job if I'm in a state of what I would describe as sympathy - the feeling of ‘Oh, look at you over there. You're having a terrible time’. It kind of raises a barrier between me and them, like ‘I'm not in that with you’. It focuses on that really difficult part of the experience and shuts down my own creativity and openness.

“In order to do the job that I want to do, which is to find that little twinkle in the child's eye… I have to kind of focus on the fact that there are real, magical human beings in front of me, and that's amazing and exciting.”