Section 9: Evaluation of the Caring Clown Training Program

 

Once you have completed the training program, it is important to evaluate both your success in being trained as well as your success within the facility that you are clowning. This section provides some suggestions for evaluating various components of the program.  If you are a leader or a teacher, who started a Caring Clown Program and offered training sessions, providing an evaluation form, such as one modeled after an adult education course, will help you determine if students learned what you set out to teach when you developed your program.

Two areas that will help you evaluate your program include questions about the effectiveness of the training and the clown’s satisfaction.  You could use questions from both of these areas to have a discussion and/or include on a questionnaire for clowns who complete the training program.  It is also a good idea to include some open-ended questions and room for comments.  You are likely to learn more about the training program from comments and open ended questions than you would from having a long list of yes/no questions.

Some potential questions to address the effectiveness of the training program might include: Did you learn the hospital/nursing home rules and procedures that apply to your clown visits?   Did you learn special skills necessary for becoming a caring clown?  List a few….  Did you receive good instruction on how to enter a patient’s room and what to do while in there?  What are your thoughts about the Apprenticeship?

Some potential questions regarding the new caring clown’s satisfaction with the course could include: Do you feel confident with the skills you have learned?  In what ways should this course change? (What should we throw out or not teach?)  In what ways should it remain the same? (What should we keep?) 

Another way to evaluate the program and the clowns is to have the patient/resident and/or the family members who received a clown visitor fill out a brief evaluation form.  A sample questionnaire for Patients/Residents who had a clown visitor can be found in Appendix D.  Staff members also may be interested in talking with you, or filling out a questionnaire to provide feedback about a clown’s visit with a patient or the clown visit’s effect on the unit.

The evaluation of a caring clown program should be an on-going process.  Follow-up questionnaires and/or meeting sessions will help continuously improve your program and offer leaders and teachers suggestions on how to improve their training programs.