B.C. ER doctor enlists puppet’s help to make hospital procedures less scary for kids

A visit to the hospital can be scary at the best of times — especially if you’re a kid. But a Peace Arch emergency room doctor is hoping a ventriloquist and her puppet friend will help ease some of those fears.

Dr. Amir Behboudi teamed up with Kellie Haines to make a series of videos to explain common, sometimes painful, and often scary procedures to children. The videos cover a range of topics, like X-rays, CT scans, IVs, and anesthesia.

Each video features Magrau, a colourful and fluffy bird, who tells the viewer what’s happening.

Behboudi says he first got the idea when he had to take his son to the hospital about five years ago.

“He needed to get an IV and at Surrey [Memorial Hospital], they have a … specialist, which is an expert in how to engage with kids when they’re going through painful procedures. I saw it and it was great,” he explained.

“So my mission was to have them at our ER, but unfortunately, we have a much smaller ER so we couldn’t get much funding for it. So we thought, what’s the next best thing?”

The next best thing, Behboudi says, was to ensure the content was available for kids.

He tells CityNews his team initially started with six videos, all featuring Magrau and Kellie, all tackling common procedures.

“If you imagine you’re a child and you go there and someone comes in with a big needle trying to jab you, it can be quite terrifying,” he said.

The videos are available online for free and are promoted on posters in various pediatric rooms at hospitals. Behboudi says the posters feature a QR code, which parents and guardians can scan with their phones to play for their kids.

The videos are shared with all Fraser Health sites, including some others, like St. Paul’s Hospital in Vancouver, he adds.

“So far, the response has been great. We’ve seen kids and parents snuggling looking at the videos. So not only do the kids know what’s going to happen, the parents know what’s going on and how to prepare for it,” Behboudi said.

“What we find is when the parents are calm, kids also get calm. It’s almost like an energy that kids can feel from their parents.”

Behboudi says the next step is to take the videos and translate them into different languages.