Reading the Room. Lessons from the Clowns. Take 2

Learn from the clowns. Embrace failure, take a deep breath, laugh, cry, engage. Revisit chat with Jason Stewart from Laughter League at Boston Children’s Hospital.

Proem

Do you ever feel like you are part of someone else’s play? Especially when you go to the doctor’s office as a caregiver or caree (also known as the patient). You and your caregiver or caree feel like crap; you’re exhausted, you’re cranky. What are we doing here? The staff is unfamiliar (really, they’re strange). What were we going to accomplish with these strange people? I’m a nurse, a patient expert, and a caregiver expert. Yet most of what I know and teach goes right out the window when it’s me in the doctor’s office, whether I’m there for myself as a patient or there for someone else like my mom or son as a caregiver. It’s 50/50 whether it’s a good appointment or a shit show. I need different skills, an attitude adjustment, something when I go to the doctor’s office. Being a nurse is no help.

I used to work at Boston Children’s Hospital, where I led the Patient Family Experience Initiative. I took a class there from the clowns — they were known as the Big Apple Circus then and the Laughter League now. I wondered if we could learn some of what the clowns can teach us as patients and caregivers about relaxing, reading the room, figuring…