There’s a new exhibit at the Discovery Center of Springfield. DCS and Children’s Mercy with Mercy came together to create the Teddy Bear Pediatric Hospital. It’s a hands-on experience where kids don medical apparel and take stuffed animal patients outfitted with computer chips through diagnostic procedures like a pulse oximeter, an x-ray machine and an MRI machine. The Discovery Center calls it part hospital, part science exhibit and part career laboratory, and it officially opened this week.
DCS CEO Tyler Moles said he wanted to bring something like this to the Discovery Center partly because of something that happened to his son.
"My own son, when he was young and he was getting ready to go to kindergarten, broke his leg right before school started on the trampoline and had to go get the x-ray and the cast and all that," said Moles. "And that's scary for a little kid. So, if we can get them familiar with the equipment and also, you know, the atmosphere of a medical environment, just sort of not terrified to go in and get fixed."
Ashley Wilson, child life services manager for Children’s Mercy with Mercy, said they’re excited about the new exhibit focused on healthcare. She said play is important for a child’s development.
"That's how they learn. That's how they explore. That's how they communicate and express themselves," said Wilson. "It's very, very important for them to have these opportunities to play because that is so familiar to them. And that's how they really, how they grow and develop over the years."
She said playing with the new equipment at the Discovery Center can help ease a child’s anxiety if they ever have to have similar tests.
And experiences like the Teddy Bear Pediatric Hospital can help a child envision a possible career. DCS said the project continues their work to connect imaginative play with real-world STEM careers.
"What they learn doing pretend play is what gears them up to learn all the other hard science and hard STEM stuff later, so getting the template piece down, getting them inspired toward medical careers at a very early age," said Moles.
He said staff built the equipment and designed custom software in-house for the new exhibit. Each teddy bear has a small NFC chip inside. The machines read the chip and bring different diagnostic reading for each bear, depending on what chip is read, according to Moles. He said he hopes to be able to "share it with the world at some point."
The Discovery Center recently started an exhibit rental and fabrication company, led by Robert Olson, to help support the museum. Moles said they're designing and perfecting things that they know other science centers, children's museums and libraries will want.
A ribbon cutting for the new exhibit was held Tuesday morning. In a tongue-in-cheek message, DCS said the event celebrated the end of the healthcare desert for teddy bears in the Ozarks.
