Tuesday, 17 January 2017 marked 20 years of Clown Doctors visiting Sydney Children’s Hospital, Randwick NSW and with this – 20 years of the Clown Doctors program nationally!

In this time there have been over 2 MILLION smiles and interactions with hospital staff, parents, brothers, sisters, grandparents, family and, most importantly, our best friends – the patients.

Dr S Duffer and Dr Quack were stuffing their faces with birthday cake at Sydney Children’s Hospital, Randwick with hospital CE Michael Brydon, who spoke of how Dr Peter Spitzer walked into his office over 20 years ago with the whacky idea of having Clown Doctors is hospitals. He went on to say it was one of the best decisions he has ever made! (We think so too!)

We are now in 24 hospitals and 7 aged care facilities around Australia, we have 4 humour therapy programs (Clown Doctors, Elder Clowns, Laughter Boss and Laughter Works) and we deliver smiles, laughter and play over 240,000 times annually!

Our CEO, Melinda Farrell, is proud as punch of where we are today, saying,

“The Humour Foundation has been at the forefront of innovation between the arts and medicine, working in close partnership with medical professionals to develop new ways of working in hospitals and other healthcare environments in Australia. We have contributed to world first research into models of improving wellbeing and continue to grow the evidence base for our work. We are now teaching and sharing this knowledge on an international stage.”

Here’s to another 20 years!