Argentina

Clown Doctors Promote Health Among Seriously Ill in Argentina

A group of more than 2,000 “clown doctors” visit patients with serious illnesses across Argentina and Chile.

Publication Date

Clown Doctors Promote Health Among Seriously Ill in Argentina

Publication Date

BUENOS AIRES, ARGENTINA – Five women change out of their street clothes and extract colorful outfits, wigs and hats from a suitcase. A bright yellow skirt replaces jeans, and black sneakers give way to pink shoes with a flower on the toe.

The women’s demeanors change with their outfits, as if they leave their personalities in the clothes they’ve tossed onto the bed. When they put on the wigs, the five women convert into clowns, each taking on a unique character.

But the transformation isn’t complete until they put on their clown noses. Their voices change, and they start to joke around.

“When I tranform into my character, I feel magic,” says Juliana Caballero, one of the five women. “It is an evolution. It’s something that happens as you get dressed. When I put on the clown nose, I begin to see everything very childlike.”

They open the door to the room and leave the changing room to infect children suffering from serious illnesses with happiness.

These five women are part of a nonprofit organization called Payamédicos, which aims to improve the emotional health of hospital patients in Argentina and Chile. Payamédicos, which translates to “clown doctors,” comprises mental health experts, doctors and people trained in basic medical knowledge and clown techniques.

Caballero and the other four women – Anahí Perez Bromberg, Zulema Ferré, Estefanía Garro and Malena Fradkin – are stationed at the Ronald McDonald House in Buenos Aires, Argentina’s capital. The house has 30 rooms for families of children with serious illnesses who come from far away for treatment at the neighboring Hospital Italiano.

The clown doctors roam the hallways of the little house, jumping from one side to the other and joking with the people who cross their paths. They divide into groups and knock on the doors of the rooms, asking for each patient by name.

“Good afternoon,” Ferré says at the room of a 3-year-old girl from Colombia who recently received a liver transplant. “I am Dr. Quica Diagnóstica. I’ve come to see Estefanía.”

Estefanía’s mother, who preferred their last name not be published, plays along with the game and welcomes the clown doctors. Estefanía celebrates the arrival of Ferré and Garro, who goes by Dr. Risitos, or Dr. Giggles. They blow bubbles, and the 3-year-old can’t contain herself as she pops them in the air.

The clown doctors visit children and adults with serious illnesses in order to alleviate their sadness and assuage fear surrounding their treatments. The funny physicians say happiness and laughter have the power to heal, which parents of patients and health care workers confirm. The volunteer visitors say they also benefit from their interactions with patients.

Dr. José Pellucchi, who specializes in intensive therapy, diagnostic imaging and psychiatry, created Payamédicos in 2000 and established it as a nonprofit organization two years later. The organization now has more than 2,000 clown doctors who visit patients in hospitals throughout Argentina and Chile. This month, the Argentine members of the organization gathered for their annual congress, called "Payacongre," in Buenos Aires.

While Estefanía delights in popping bubbles, Luca García, 6, waits in the hallway with the door of his room ajar. He knows that every Friday, the clown doctors come to visit. With various games prepared to play with them, he awaits their visit to his room.

Luca has big glasses and a serious face that make him seem older than his age. But when he sees Ferré as Diagnóstica, he suddenly smiles, showing all his little teeth.

Luca underwent his first surgery when he was 7 months old. He lives some 900 kilometers (560 miles) away from Buenos Aires in the province of Corrientes, where treatment for his sickness isn’t available. Sometimes, he spends a month in the capital at the Ronald McDonald House while obtaining treatment at Hospital Italiano.

“He already doesn’t associate our trips with the hospital,” says his grandmother, Flavia Piñeiro. “He knows that every Friday, the clown doctors come, and he always, always waits for them.”

They play a flag game because Luca is an expert in identifying them. Between the games, Luca shows the clown doctors a new apparatus that his family bought him to help him breathe. His difficulty breathing is a consequence of his congenital myopathy, a term for any muscle disorder present at birth.

Diagnóstica laughs and takes a similar apparatus out of her bag, though hers is covered with colorful stickers. The clown doctors use silly names and colorful decorations for the medical supplies they tote around in their briefcases in order to lighten the mood and make the patients more comfortable with their treatments.

For example, they call syringes “jeringaracas,” a mix of the Spanish words for syringe and maracas, or “jeringófonos,” a mix of syringe and microphone. They also insert “clown” as a perennial prefix, giving clown kisses, clown hugs, clown balloons, clown drawings and, when patients aren’t in their rooms, leaving clown messages.

“They try to succeed that a frightening object, like a catheter or a syringe, is converted into a fun object,” Pellucchi says.

Thanks to the clown doctors’ colorful catheters, Luca stopped being afraid of real catheters, Piñeiro says.

“Luca has a great bond with Quica,” she says. “He suffered a lot with the catheters, so it helped him to play with these things. The fact that she brings catheters painted or with stickers makes him take the things in another way.”

Color plays a fundamental role in this effort to lighten the patients’ often grave reality. The clown doctors wear colorful costumes, barring colors like dark purple, black or brown.

“Color is light,” Pellucchi says. “We don’t use cold colors.”

The clown doctors look to establish a link with their patients, visiting them individually and interacting with their families for a half hour or more. Before they interact with new patients, they read their medical histories, Pellucchi says.

But they don’t focus on the patients' illnesses during their visits.

Instead, the clown doctors aim to make the patients the focus, reduce the drama surrounding their illnesses, evoke a sense of catharsis, generate sustained optimism and accompany them during their treatments, Pellucchi says. In order to achieve these goals, the clown doctors connect with a healthy part of the patients: their senses of humor.

“The situation of admission is already traumatic,” Pellucchi says. “The illness is traumatic. It already implies a lack. If he or she goes only because the person suffers, the clown doctor would find a sufferer, and that would counter going to see the healthy part.”

Each clown doctor develops a character that determines his or her costume, wig, nose and name. Pellucchi explains that it’s this character, not the person behind the clown nose, who connects with the patient.

“The clown is the most beautiful, the more humorous and, therefore, the most healthy,” says Pellucchi, whose character is called Verdín Vaporín. “That’s why Payamédicos isn’t created from the lack, but from the wish. We talk about a revolution of love. We don’t think about what is missing. We think about what we can do.”

Gabriela Lebenas, manager of the Ronald McDonald House, says she has witnessed the power of laughter for the children who stay here.

“I have seen kids take some steps with the clown doctors when they didn’t take them or smile when they never smiled or communicate with sounds when they didn’t do so with their father or their mother,” she says. “What the clown doctors want to achieve, they achieve.”

For Walter Podokian, seeing his son, Máximo, laugh before dying from leukemia at 4 years old is something that he still appreciates two years later. That’s why he and his wife decided to put a clown nose on their son’s tombstone.

“I want to thank the clown doctors for what they did for Máximo and for all the people who are suffering,” Podokian says. “I take off my hat to the clown doctors. I hope that all the days they can get a smile out of a sick person. The clown doctors have a unique reward that we don’t achieve as parents, that is to make them laugh.”

For Marcelo González, the father of Josefa González, a 10-year-old girl who recently received a heart transplant, the happiness that the clown doctors infect them with comes from the inside.

“What they express is not the laughter of a clown,” he says. “It’s the laughter of true happiness. This gives you life, it gives you energy. To me, the clown doctors take away from me the context of sadness.”

The clown doctors say they also benefit from the interactions.

Wrapping up their visit, the five women at the Ronald McDonald House return to the room where they began their transformation. They remove the bright colors and put on their regular clothing.

But they don’t stop talking about their experience and the reactions of the patients. They don’t seem tired. Rather, they seem fulfilled.

“Clearly, I had sad moments since I started with this,” Garro says. “But I feel that what I do does good for me too.”

Pellucchi says that transforming into his character energizes him. He talks about the happiness he feels when, after long stints in public psychiatric hospitals where he’s seen severe illnesses, he can put on his constume and intervene as a clown.

“For me, this is a drug,” he says. “It’s very strong. We aren’t barefoot Carmelites. We come because we love it.”

Pellucchi says he has always felt a drive to help people.

“I was always very restless, and I always had a caring component,” he says. “I was the boy who carried shopping bags for elderly women. On a corner in a neighborhood where I lived, there were always accidents, and I used to go help the people. This way, I learned first aid. I also painted, did theater, music.”

Payamédicos is one item on a long list of projects that Pellucchi has executed during the past 20 years in which he has blended a passion for theater with his vocation as a doctor. Three others have joined Pellucchi on this venture, meeting daily to make central decisions about the academic and artistic process that drives Payamédicos.

A medical degree is not required to become a clown doctor. The mostly young volunteers take a yearlong medical-artistic course offered by the organization. First, they learn clown techniques and theory about the human body. Second, they do an internship in a health center under the guidance of clown doctors who already earned their noses.

The aspiring clown doctors must pay a fee to participate in the weekly course, which costs 250 pesos ($52) a month, though the organization also offers a free intensive course every year for those who can’t afford it. The fee pays the 54 people who currently teach these courses in Argentina and the mental health specialists who supervise the clown doctors’ work.

But the clown doctors do their work for free, moved simply by their urge to make the patients laugh.

“It’s not the lack that moves us, but the wish,” Pellucchi repeats as if it's the slogan of Payamédicos.