Mission

To bring to the people present in public and philanthropic hospitals, especially adult patients, accompanies, visitors and staff the possibility of receiving doses from the most precious medicines from the world: joyfulness, motivation and information. Through playful interaction, the volunteers also promote the education focused on physical and mental health.
In addition has as a mission to bring to the educational institutions, companies and any organization, workshops about the importance of volunteering and also the health maintenance and disease prevention.

Objectives

1) Hospital Amenization

The Citizen Doctors employ a neologism – amenization – to define the mains objective of the volunteer work. It’s unnecessary to say that the hospital environment is marked by anxiousness, which is the stress’s fuel. Therefore the visits and interaction done by the Citizen Doctors has as a mission to bring to the public inside the hospitals – mainly adults – the possibility to receive doses from precious medicines: joyfulness, motivation and information. The work is done in a light, relaxed, and respectful way seeking for a moment to transform the hospital environment so the patients, professionals and visitors can gain positive energy, which is essential on the continuous battle for life. The science has proved that happiness can improve a patient’s health state as well as enhance receptiveness for the medical treatments. In many cases there is a reduction on hospitalization period bringing clear positive results to the patient and his or her family in addition to a cost reduction to the public health system.

2) Volunteering

Another key objective from the initiative is to promote in every possible opportunity the importance of volunteer work. By the exposition that the work achieves and the attention that it draws to the hospital visits as to the workshops and published news that where the work is the main issue. The invitation to volunteer work is always in issue and a objective. Through the attention that a single volunteer from the Citizen Doctors can reach towards the others lies the possibility of always reinforcing the message of the benefits from doing volunteer work. In addition to the volunteering promotion to the one who receives the Citizen Doctors’ message there is also the objective of motivating young university students to solidarity actions through the invitation to be part of the initiative. It is exactly in the way of promoting the volunteering among university students that de Citizen Doctors make workshops frequently. This way the young student will be a transforming agent for his living community. More than that the young students will be a broadcaster of the importance and benefits of volunteering together with other university students, encouraging them to experimentation.

3) Citizenship in practice

The fundamental Citizen Doctors’ tool is the word. Through it we add the task of bringing doses of positive energy to the hospitals and inviting to volunteering and the promotion of citizenship.
Socrates still in the Ancient Greece said that the citizen is the one who takes care of his city. Once that the volunteers develop an interactive conversational relationship with millions of citizens they seek to transmit as well messages that motivate the others to put in full practice the citizenship. This way, hints about consumers’ rights, ecology, health, self-motivation among other themes, are introduced in a very good-humored way on the hospital interactions, inviting the person to put it into practice on their day-by-day life. This information will be generated by the proponent organization and sent to its volunteers weekly so they can add it to their interactive activities towards the public.

4) Prevention and Education

Yet as an objective from the Citizen Doctors lays the education especially through informative campaign making. This way the volunteers will have every two months one theme to take to the patients, visitors and hospital staff. One example of theme is the blood donation; a specific informational material will be provided and delivered to the public with relevant information about the issue, transmitted in a persuasive way, which is proper from the Citizen Doctors. Other themes will be discussed: breast and prostate cancer prevention, stress, health and mouth health, among others.

Beginning and developing

The initiative from the Citizen Doctors started in 1999, when the Business Administrator and Radio Speaker Roberto Ravagnani, inspired by the life story of Patch Adams, created the Dr. Ispaguetti Saracura, the first character from the group. During 2 years and a half, Dr. Ispaguetti visited alone the Brigadeiro State Hospital, in São Paulo city. The pioneer work was part of the creation of the volunteer work on the hospital, especially for one characteristic that came to be the mark of the work: the choice of the adult and elder public as the work focus. Many people are curious about this decision. After all, do adults like clowns? Get to know it in a while. Following the timeline, on the beginning of 2002 the Citizen Doctors gained its second character, the Doctor Raviolli Bem-te-vi, played by the Advertising Executive and radio Speaker Felipe Mello. Since this moment they were sure that the work run very well for the adult public, filling a gap on hospital volunteering focused on that public.
That’s how started the expansion group process in quantity of volunteers and hospitals as well as ins patients attended. The belief on the possible things and the wills of bringing moments of joy and high doses of motivation and information to the people present in hospitals motivated the activity’s development. At the end of 2002 the first crew of new volunteers began to be trained. Following the chronogram of a rigorous 10-week training, new volunteers were qualified and started to act. With the training format success and the growing number of people willing to be part of the group, the coordinators created a planning for new groups. The outcome? At the end of 203, the Citizen Doctors counted already on 65 trained volunteers working on 22 hospitals. Believing more and more on the work’s importance the group doesn’t stop growing! In 2004 and 2005 there were five more trainings making the Citizen Doctors come to the number of 325 volunteers in May 2006 acting in 33 health care units.
In June 2006 three more groups were trained (nowadays it´s a 20-week training, with almost 60 hours) and by the end of the year the total number of volunteers was almost 500.
In July 2007 one more group finished the training, and the group reached the number of 560 volunteers.