Service Plans
For Hospitalized Children
Smiles are an essential part of childhood, the sunlight that warms the world. But for children living in hospitals, the tension and anxiety brought by cold and seemingly endless treatments replace happiness and imagination. Without appropriate care, even after recovering and leaving the hospital, they often carry lifelong shadows from these painful experiences.
Red Nose Doctors’ “Hospital Ward Performances” are the core service through which we visit hospitals every week. Professional performing artists who have undergone rigorous training work in pairs, visiting hospital wards to create tailor-made improvisational performances for hospitalized children. Through games and music, Red Nose Doctors build imaginary worlds together with children, helping them rediscover their laughter, courage, and positive attitude toward the future, while creating wonderful memories and distracting them from their fear of pain and unfamiliar treatments. Red Nose Doctors are equal partners and friends to children. Children can command or refuse the clowns, allowing those who can only passively receive treatment in the hospital to regain a sense of control and rebuild their confidence in life.
The “Smile Tour Children’s Day Tour—Clown Doctors’ Joyful Show” is Red Nose Doctors’ annual signature tradition and major annual event. Every Children’s Day, professional clown doctors step beyond their usual one-on-one ward visits and expand their performances to more than 20 hospitals across Taiwan. Combining music with interactive theater, they stage pop-up performances in outpatient areas and lobbies, delivering special holiday gifts to hospitalized children who “cannot leave the hospital to celebrate the holiday” and dispelling their anxiety about medical care. This is the largest event of the year, mobilizing the most clown doctors and spanning hospitals in the greatest number of cities and counties, becoming a landmark collective action that brings laughter to hospital wards every year.
Red Nose Doctors provide appropriate, professional performance support while medical teams administer treatment. For example, when children cry or fuss, they use music or games to divert their attention and reduce discomfort during treatment, helping medical work proceed more smoothly. By involving medical staff appropriately in the interactions, they ease the relationship between children and medical personnel and make children less afraid of them. Red Nose Doctors are also children’s teammates. After discussing the approach with therapists in advance, they use fun, interactive methods to practice challenges together with children receiving early intervention. This not only improves the effectiveness of rehabilitation sessions but also inspires children’s confidence and self-affirmation.
For Older Adults
Taiwan is rapidly becoming an aging society, yet most systems still focus primarily on medical care for older adults, overlooking their psychological and social needs. This is especially true for older people receiving treatment and care in hospitals, who often lie alone in hospital beds accompanied by foreign caregivers with whom they cannot communicate easily.
Red Nose Doctors design performances for each older adult based on familiar memories from their lives, from the costumes and content to the ways they interact. These performances not only add fun to hospital life; the regular weekly visits also build friendships with them, enhance their sensory abilities, help them reconnect with their communities, and restore their sense of self-worth and fulfillment. They compose beautiful harmonies for the twilight of life, bringing warmth and beauty to the later years of older adults.
Red Nose Doctors’ geriatric ward service provides tailor-made improvisational companionship for older adults by professional medical clowns. Working in pairs, performers make regular rounds, using old songs, musical instruments, dance steps, and puppetry to enter the world of older adults with humor.
The core of the service is to guide older adults in reclaiming their youth and personal dignity. When facing older adults with dementia or physical and cognitive decline, performers carefully observe subtle signals and use gentle physical interaction to guide activities, achieving a form of invisible rehabilitation.
In addition to accompanying patients, clown doctors also serve as emotional bridges, effectively easing the caregiving pressure on families and foreign caregivers while bringing positive energy to medical staff. These professional performers, who have undergone rigorous medical training, use laughter to break the gloom of hospital wards and help older adults rediscover their vitality when facing illness.
Red Nose Doctors’ adult day care center service is similar to a regular weekly “everyday social gathering” and “spiritual rehabilitation.” Unlike the private companionship provided in hospital wards, this service takes place in public spaces. Through group games such as tossing and catching balls and clapping, it gently guides reserved or cognitively impaired older adults to move their bodies. Performers break away from one-way performances, improvisationally drawing older adults and care staff into the interaction and transforming older adults from spectators of clown shows into participants. The regular weekly “journal-style companionship” builds an understanding with older adults like that between longtime friends, leaves happy memories in their minds, and creates a sense of anticipation. Clown doctors also serve as catalysts for vitality within the institutions, effectively relieving the pressure on frontline caregivers and infusing positive energy into daily long-term care.