Teddy Bear Hospital

Each year, medical students from Notre Dame University visit our students early childhood students as part of the Wheatbelt Medical Student Immersion Program Teddy Bear Hospital Sessions.

The Teddy Bear Hospital is a community program that was developed to provide children with positive health care experiences, ease fears or anxiety associated with doctor or hospital visits, promote health and wellbeing, and increase health awareness.

It also provides medical students the opportunity to practice skills that will be necessary in the future when working with children.

The process behind the Teddy Bear Hospital is that children bring a teddy or soft toy to a pretend hospital and act as the parents of the teddy with a problem. Children will be actively engaged in the check-up as they explain what is wrong with their teddy.

This provides the opportunity for medical students to practice their paediatric communication skills, using child-friendly language to communicate with the child, form and explain a treatment plan to help improve teddy’s health and
wellbeing.

Each child works through a scenario with their teddy facilitating discussions on important aspects of health, including diet, physical activity and sun protection.