‘Dancing Doc’ is Cheering Up His Young Patients and Will Make You Smile

A visit to the hospital can be really scary for kids, but one physician assistant is showing off his sweet dance moves so his young patients feel better. He’s been given the title of “Dancing Doc” and his daily dance-offs are going viral for cheering up kids and for making the internet a happier place.

Tony Adkins is a physician assistant for the pediatric neurosurgery department at Children's Hospital of Orange County, California. He’s also a father of two daughters and a dancing machine. Just check out his Facebook page where he has been sharing fun and uplifting videos of his daily dances where his partners are his patients.

According to the Dancing Doc, he started dancing with patients about a year ago when he saw it was the only way to make them “feel like kids again.” Now busting a move in the hospital is his jam and he gets requests from both parents and kids.

“They ask us for the Dancing Doc,” Trisha Stockton, a neuroscience unit nurse, tells the Orange County Register. “Tony lightens up every room he walks into. A kid that hasn’t smiled in days, smiles," she added.

Adkins says that music and dancing have always helped during his darkest days. Now he wants to share the same joy with his patients.

“It gave me a way to cope,” Adkins said. “And now, I use the same thing that helped me to calm my patients.”

It seems like dancing and laughing is the best kind of medicine for many of these kids. Adkins explains in an article for Medpage Today, “Many neurology patients often can’t move their hands or legs and may be tethered to their beds or wearing a brace. Being celebrated through song and dance brings them much joy and helps to get their minds off their disease. That’s why you might catch me in the hospital halls or in a patient’s room grooving to a hit song with my little friends.”

We hope to see more of the Dancing Doc and his patients because their dancing has certainly cheered made us feel a whole lot better.