“Teddy Bear Hospital Project” school visits improve pre-clerkship students’ comfort explaining medical concepts to children

Abstract

Implication Statement The “Teddy Bear Hospital Project” (TBHP) is a low cost, international initiative aimed at reducing children’s fears associated with healthcare visits by modelling these interactions using teddy bears. The University of Ottawa program had the additional objective of assessing whether TBHP increased pre-clerkship medical students’ comfort communicating medical concepts to children. Our student volunteers reported a statistically significant increase in their comfort communicating medical topics to young children and all volunteers would recommend TBHP to a colleague interested in pursuing family medicine or pediatrics. Our program could also be easily replicated by Pediatric Interest Groups at other Canadian medical schools.

Developing as health professionals through community volunteering: exploring the value of a partnership between medical students and primary schools online compared to in-person

“…Improvement in communication skills and confidence interacting with children were often mentioned as benefits of participating in ICSM-TBH sessions. This strengthens existing evidence by Kis et al, who found that communicating with children in a volunteer setting increased medical students’ comfort when communicating medical information [ 5 ]. Whilst both in-person and online sessions were found to promote development of communication skills amongst volunteers, in-person sessions were deemed better for the development of confidence interacting with children, as this was more challenging to maintain their engagement online.…”

“…Teddy Bear Hospital (TBH) is a university student-led volunteering group present in many universities and medical schools internationally [1][2][3][4][5]. It utilises play to promote healthy living among primary school children (aged 5 to 7 years) and reduce their anxiety surrounding hospitals and healthcare professionals [6].…”

Medical schools don’t change; people do

“…Kis, Endres, et al wrote "Teddy Bear Hospital Project" school visits improve pre-clerkship students' comfort explaining medical concepts to children. 20 They used the Teddy Bear Hospital Project to assess whether using teddy bears to model healthcare visits to children would increase pre-clerkship medical students' comfort in communicating medical concepts to children. Their results showed a statistically significant increase in comfort in sharing medical topics with young children.…”