"Clown College" by MSIH first year blogger Rebecca Siegel

           On Wednesday evening at 3:47, a typical first medical student rummages through her backpack, to prepare for her next class. She sits in the break room on the sixth floor of the internal medicine building at Soroka hospital. She takes out a biochemistry textbook and put it’s on the floor beside her backpack. She takes out some highlighters, flash cards, and a binder full of printed out slides from immunology lectures. She still hasn’t found what she is looking for. She pulls out a tutu and then continues to rummage until she finds a Santa hat.  “Finally”, she mumbles. It’s time for class. 

Welcome to medical clowning. Meet Dr. Amnon Raviv, the only self-proclaimed only personal in the world to have a PHD in medical clowning. He is a clown, a real-word superhero, and the instructor of this very special course. He is a human sigh-of-relief for people battling serious illnesses all of the country. On any given day he can be found in an oncology ward, belting out an upbeat western style song about colon cancer, or in the surgery wing, helping a 5-year-old boy make a list of what dreams he would like to have during surgery (before summoning in the anesthesiologist and reading the list of dream-demands aloud).

As we leave the class three hours later, I feel a little overwhelmed by how lucky we are to have Dr. Raviv. We are students of empathy and active listening. We are tutu clad care takers. And for three hours every week, we are allowed to reclaim some of the idealism that made us want to practice medicine in the first place.

       It’s time to practice. One student is the patient, one is the doctor and one is the clown. Dr. Raviv tells us that the patient is a small child who is getting a shot, but feels quite scared. The clown tries to make bird noises and funny faces in order to distract the child from the shot. Dr. Raviv stops the exercise.“ The child is afraid of the shot”, Raviv explains “and you’re not going to help by ignoring the shot.”   They try again, only this time the clown jokes about the shot. He pretends to give it to the nurse, to himself, even to the wall. “Better”, Dr. Raviv says. Slowly we are starting to understand.