Teddy Bear Hospital open for business at the North

Teddy Bear Hospital open for business at the Northern Hospital

This month third year MDs from the Northern Clinical School ran a Teddy Bear Hospital. Facilitated by Assoc. Prof Wei Qi Fan, the foyer activity attracted children who were on their way to outpatient appointments, leaving the Emergency department or attending with family.

Students at the Northern Clinical School have broad exposure to a range of inpatient and outpatient paediatric services. They are also placed in the Emergency Department, which is the busiest in Victoria seeing over 92,000 patients each year with one in five patients presenting to the ED being a child.

The Teddy Bear Hospital gave the medical students an opportunity to improve their communication skills, focusing on rapport building, use of appropriate language and transfer of knowledge relevant to the child’s developmental stage. Students had fun educating the children with a broad goal to reduce fear around the medical consultation. The event will now be run as a regular component of the third year Northern Clinical School experience.