In an attempt to adjust to the diminishing enthusiasm of sick children for clowns, a small hospital in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania has begun repurposing its hospital clowns. For the past month, the outpatient center at Johnson Medical Center has begun the novel practice of using hospital clowns as chaperones for clinical exams and procedures.
“Hospital clowns are the perfect group to act as chaperones to ensure a safe environment for both the patient and the doctor during physical exams” explained Kyle Melon of Patient Resources. “They’re unbiased, friendly, comforting and most importantly, seemingly asexual”.
Strange-O and Stare-O are just two of the newly instated chaperone clowns used for this initiative. So far the clowns have been met with mixed reviews. Mixed in the sense that it is a mix of bad reviews with even worse reviews.
“It’s frickin weird” said a patient who received a testicular exam chaperoned by Strange-O. “Half way through the exam, Strange-O just whips out some oranges and starts juggling them. Then he looks at me and chuckles, ‘Now there are two people in this room juggling balls’”.
‘I don’t like it” said one patient who received a pap spear with Stare-O in the room. “Stare-O just kept direct unblinking eye contact with me for the entire thing, while maintaining a soulless open-mouthed, yellow toothed grin”. The patient however clarified that it was still less uncomfortable than having a fresh to rotations male medical student in the room.
“Last week we had issues with Stare-O trying to make balloon animals out of the condoms we give out” recounted nurse Matt Rose. Nurse Rose explained that when he told Stare-O to refrain, the clown silently protested by filing an imaginary nursing complaint form and then passing a non-imaginary stool into an imaginary bed pan. “He basically just on the floor” clarified Nurse Rose.
“While I’ll admit there have been some unfortunate isolated incidents, I am confident that these clowns are nonetheless improving patient comfortability” supported Mrs. Anacondios. “In fact, last week I heard there was a woman who was in tears before her exam, so Strange-O took it upon himself to start coughing and dry heaving for a solid four minutes so he could eventually produce a long moist handkerchief from his mouth, to give to her. Now that’s commitment to care.”
Anacondios added that they plan to extend the use of clowns to other parts of the hospital including the OR once they receive their orders of size XXXL clown-sized shoe covers. She also mentioned that are preliminary talks to amalgamate the clowns with the third year medical students in order to sequester the people in the hospital that no one takes seriously.
