Our visiting clowns in action: how Pippa-Jolie and Ina Schnusel bring a smile to people's faces
January 21, 2025
5 min
The two visiting clowns Pippa-Jolie and Ina Schnusel offer a fascinating insight into their work at Zollikerberg Hospital. With music, magic and humour, they visit patients on various wards every month to create moments of lightness and joy. They talk about people's touching reactions and share moving stories of encounters that have left lasting impressions.
How often do you visit patients at Zollikerberg Hospital?
In January of this year, we started the 2-year training programme to become a visiting clown at the petite académie drole clown school in Olten. We currently visit patients on the neonatology, paediatric permanent care, dialysis and surgery wards once a month. We practise the art of encounter and use our knowledge and acquired skills, such as music, magic, puppetry and comedy techniques, to open doors for heart-to-heart encounters and spread cheerfulness. In concrete terms, this can mean that we use music to change the mood in the room or playfully conquer the space. For example, the floor may suddenly become water and the patient couch may turn into a sailing ship.
What do the patients' reactions and feedback look like?
Pippa-Jolie: The reactions are very positive and priceless. The young patients are often amazed, laughing and simply happy. With their parents, it is gratitude for the support, and with the adults, we are often touched, happy and grateful. They feel valued and are grateful for the change. We have also received feedback from carers who have told us that we have triggered something in the patients, like flicking a switch.
Ina Schnusel: The age range of the people we meet is open from birth and upwards. The reactions are colourful, it can be a deep breath, a smile, crying, a look, talking about what moves them, singing together, playing, dancing, relief through distraction during an intervention, letting out anger and much more.
How did you come to perform as clowns in hospitals and what fascinates you about this work?
Ina Schnusel: I have long harboured the desire to train in this field. Now I've started and I'm delighted to be one of the 10 selected students at the petite académie drole who are now on the 2-year part-time training programme. When I worked as an intensive care nurse at the UKBB in Basel, I always found it fascinating when the visiting clowns gave us time every week and conjured up a little lightness in often very difficult moments.
Pippa-Jolie: I have been working as a nurse here at Zollikerberg Hospital for over 20 years. I've had a puppet and children's theatre with my husband and a friend for a long time. For me, this training was the perfect combination of theatre and my work here at the hospital. It's these little magical moments that arise at work that fascinate me. The honest encounters from person to person.
A video message from Pippa-Jolie and Ina Schnusel
How do you prepare yourself mentally and emotionally for your visits to patients? Are there any rituals or exercises that help you to slip into your role?
Pippa-Jolie: To slip into the role, it helps me personally to take my time getting dressed and putting on make-up. When I put on the red nose, I enter the magical world of fantasy. We often sing a song together in the dressing room to get us in the right mood.
Ina Schnusel: We meet beforehand and arrive at the hospital all packed together. The transformation in the cloakroom from private person to visiting clown has already become a ritual and I find the start as a duo very inspiring every time.
What role does humour play in your work with patients? Do you believe that laughter can actually heal?
Ina Schnusel: There are already various studies that show that visiting clowns can evoke positive feelings. Sometimes people laugh, but very often it's the very small moments of lightness and light-heartedness that can arise in an exceptional situation.
Pippa-Jolie: I'm very convinced of that. Distraction is a wonderful remedy for pain and anxiety. The effect that laughter has on our self-healing and our immune system has long been proven. There are now also several studies on the effect of hospital clowns. For people suffering from dementia, for example, emotions are often the only way in. And the visiting clown works with these. It is wonderful to see how an introverted person suddenly opens their eyes when a familiar song is played on the guitar.
A stay in hospital can be difficult and uncertain for patients. The illness can fill the room and take over. A visit from a clown opens a window, perhaps to escape the situation for a moment. If the window remains open after the visit, comforting confidence and warmth floods in.
Can you tell us about a particularly beautiful or moving moment that you experienced as a hospital clown?
Pippa-Jolie: I had Pippa-Jolie's invisible horse with me. A patient in surgery knew that it had to be a Shetlander because of its size. She knew a lot about horses as she had some on her farm. I was allowed to leave it there briefly for care. Later, at the children's permanence, a grandfather realised how much I had on my mind with this horse and the guitar. He offered to take the horse with him. 30 minutes later, a doctor came and said that there was another grandfather with a horse in bunk 1 and he wasn't sure if he had given the right feed. So I went to have a look and found a smiling grandfather with a mischievously smiling grandson.
Ina Schnusel: In the neonatology ward, a space was screened off with several pavilions and the information was that no direct contact was allowed due to isolation. So Pippa and I made contact from a distance with the child's mother, who was lying in a deckchair with her child. Using quiet words and sign language, we asked if she would agree to a visit. With a thumbs-up and a hearty nod, she gave us the go-ahead. Visual contact was possible in a gap about 10 cm wide. We chose a soft and somewhat dreamy song. Mum began to beam and after a short time big tears rolled down her cheeks. She always signalled to us that we were welcome through the occasional visual contact. When our song fell silent, she thanked us warmly for being there. We stuck a good wish with a lucky beetle on the inside wall of one of the caravans and she waved a beaming goodbye to us.
These precious moments in which we are simply there and try with all our senses to spontaneously give what might be right are simply wonderful. I'm sure the child felt the joy, mum felt our deep appreciation and it just felt right for the two of us. It is a privilege that I, as Ina Schnusel, am able to be out and about with the wonderful Pippa-Jolie to give joy and time.
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