|
Monash University > News and Events > Monash Memo
Students establish Teddy Bear Hospital
28 October 2009
Medicine students from the University's Gippsland campus have opened a Teddy Bear Hospital to help alleviate the anxiety children often feel when visiting a doctor.
With help from students at Morwell Park Primary School, the Monash students are setting out to change children's perceptions and make them more comfortable when visiting their doctor by helping them understand what happens behind the scenes in medical settings.
The hospital includes 10 different stations that "parents" (the school children) and their teddies move through. These stations range from scrubbing up to surgery, holding Teddy's hand in an ambulance, through to learning about nutrition and exercise from the friendly doctors.
Program co-director Sarah Cain said the primary school students become parents for the day and bring their teddies, as children, to visit the Teddy Bear Hospital.
"In this unthreatening environment these young people gain understanding about what doctors do when people and teddies are sick or need their help," Sarah said.
"We are involved at each stage of the process to show our young patients that hospitals and seeing the doctor can be a positive experience."
The idea of the Teddy Bear Hospital was introduced to the Gippsland Medical School by Irum Sunderji and Pri Vijayakumar, students from The Imperial College of London.
For more information visit the Teddy Bear Hospital website.
|
