Objectives
The project helps child patients and their families cope with the difficult challenge of hospitalization thanks to the visits by the Dream Doctors. These are professional artists, employed and trained by Fondation Théodora to operate in pediatric hospitals, offer high quality visits to a growing number of children and help them smile.
Hospitalization can be a source of anxiety: children are separated from their parents and friends and constrained in a place with little opportunity for distraction and fun. Laughter helps children and families cope with the difficult challenge of hospitalisation. The Dream Doctor becomes a special friend who listens, makes children smile and comes up with new games and magic tricks that make them dream and fantasies thus helping them recognize themselves as children rather than patients.
Beneficiaries
- 4’100 young patients of the Bellinzona, Locarno, Lugano, Mendrisio and Sorengo hospitals;
- Civic Hospital (Lugano), Blessed Virgin (Mendrisio), Hopsital of Charity (Locarno), San Giovanni Hospital (Bellinzona) and OTAF Hospital (Sorengo).
Activities
In 2014 and 2015 Fondation Alta Mane supported Fondation Théodora’s Dream Doctors in their biweekly specialised individual visits to long-stay child patients suffering from serious pathologies in 5 hospitals in Ticino. During their visits, the Dream Doctors organised artistic activities and provided entertainment and psychological relief for the children, stimulating their imagination.
Partner
Fondation Théodora organizes visits by Dream Doctors. These are professional artists, trained to work in hospitals and help children and families cope with the difficult challenge of hospitalization by playing with them and listening to their emotions. The artists involved in the Dreams Doctor program receive continuous training in the arts, psychology and therapy in order to guarantee an optimal collaboration with the medical staff of the hospital and the respect of specific codes of conduct.
Information
Fondation Alta Mane supported Fondation Théodora at the Bern paediatric oncology hospital from 2009 to 2013. In 2014 and 2015, the foundation supported Dream Doctors visits in five hospitals in the Ticino Canton. Since 2016, Fondation Alta Mane has supported the work of the Dream Doctors in two hospitals in Turkey.[/fusion_tab][/fusion_tabs]
