Smiles Are Everywhere: Integrating Clown-Play into healthcare practice

The role of humour, laughter and play in healthcare and wellbeing is a hot topic. Smiles are Everywhere: Integrating clown-play into healthcare practice is a practical handbook aimed primarily at healthcare professionals and those working in healthcare settings who wish to bring play and humour into their work. Drawing together the authors’ considerable experience in practice, research and training in the use of humour in healthcare settings, this book works to bring theory into practice in a simple, user-friendly manner. Central to Smiles are Everywhere is the understanding that healthcare professionals are striving to deliver patient-centred care and that the activities suggested can be integrated into existing methods of care delivery. The book includes: A rationale for why and where laughter and play are beneficial in healthcare settings Guidelines for integrating clown-plays into your own practice Advice on strategies and approaches More than fifty clearly laid out activities and ideas developed and adapted by the authors. Ideal for healthcare professionals as well as anyone working in a healthcare setting, the ideas presented here can also be translated to educational, corporate and training environments.

Table of Contents:
Table of Contents. List of Illustrations. Acknowledgements. Preface. Why Clown-play Belongs in Healthcare. How Clowns Play – A Brief History of Clowns Using Laughter and Play for Health. Clown-Play 101 - Integrating Clown-plays into Your Own Practice. Strategies and Approaches. Key to Clown-plays. Clown-plays. Next Steps - Replenishing Your Humour Quotient. References. At-a-glance Guide to Clown-plays. Index.

About the Author :
Bernie Warren is an internationally respected researcher, teacher, and writer on the role of the arts in healthcare and education. In 2001 he created Fools For Health, which runs clown-doctor programs for all ages and for more than 10 years worked in hospitals and healthcare facilities as "Dr. Haven’t-a-Clue". Peter Spitzer is the Medical Director, co-founder and Inaugural Chairman of the Humour Foundation charity dedicated to promoting the health benefits of humour. He delights in teaching humour techniques to healthcare undergraduates and postgraduates as well as the education and corporate sectors.

Review :
Smiles are Everywhere: Integrating clown-play into healthcare practice is an important book for anyone who has aging parents, or who is an aging parent, or who has loved ones that have been or will be hospitalized, and for all those who work with, or are associated with any of these groups! It presents positive, hope-filled approaches to humanizing health care--to spreading light and smiles everywhere, and to everyone. This wonderfully accessible, user-friendly new work by Bernie Warren and Peter Spitzer presents not only a history of clowning in health care, but also a clear, articulate, and brilliantly abbreviated "how to." Reading about the expanding role of clowning in health care is one thing, but actually having the chance to use some of those practices...? This is what the authors have successfully delivered through their book, which includes discussions on strategies and approaches, as well as a large number of short, precise 'clown-play' outlines that appear in easy-to-follow chart formats, as well as a valuable, all-in-one-page overall categorization. The authors are also careful to include cautions, pitfalls, important advice--and large doses of encouragement. As well, those interested in the constantly emerging qualitative and quantitative research results for the use of clowning approaches in health care will find references and links to this information. There are never enough smiles in health care. With this book, however, the authors give us a useful guide to increase smiles to everyone, everywhere. Glenys McQueen-Fuentes, Associate Professor, Brock University, Canada "Smiles are Everywhere presents positive, hope-filled approaches to humanizing health care--to spreading light and smiles everywhere, and to everyone. There are never enough smiles in healthcare. With this book, however, the authors give us a useful guide to increasing those smiles, for everyone, everywhere, throughout all forms of healthcare." Glenys McQueen-Fuentes, Brock University, Canada "Medical education tends to immunise us against realising that humour can be a part of medical care. Now, in a practical, user-friendly format this book gives the key to allowing all health professionals to use some of the Clown Doctor techniques for the benefit of patients of all ages. I can’t wait to start." Professor Kim Oates, The University of Sydney, Australia