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We’re often asked how did Frank
Barnhill, M.D. end up with the nickname Dr. Huggie Bear. Visitors to his
informational website wonder why the site is named drhuggiebear.com
instead of something like behavior.com. So we decided to give you a
little history of both.
In 1982 a ward
secretary at the local hospital noticed Dr. Frank hugged dozens of
people every day while making rounds and responding to emergency room
calls. She further noted he hugged everyone regardless of age, gender or
race and all responded with warm smiles and seemed to have happy
attitudes they carried away as they left the hospital.
She decided to keep
track of Dr. Frank’s hugging habits and found in the course of one seven
day period, he had hugged over 200 patients and hospital staff. Wanting
to get a better idea of this habit, she asked his office staff to keep
up with patients and family members hugged and they reported an
additional 220 in five days. At that point, she started referring to him
as Dr. Huggie Bear, “because he was like a big teddy bear that hugged
everybody and made them feel good”!
As time went on,
patients discovered Dr. Frank was using “hug therapy” on everyone he
met. It didn’t matter whether they were a patient in his practice or not
he hugged people everywhere he went. Dr. Frank was often overheard
saying “everybody needs at least 34 hugs a day to feel really good!” The
highest compliment he was ever given came from a Catholic priest who had
never been hugged as an adult until he visited Dr. Frank for the first
time. At first he admitted, he couldn’t believe someone would actually
want to hug an old man who was as a stranger. Eventually, he started his
own Parish hug program and for the first time in seventy years fully
understood the power of the human hug.
Dr. Frank
extended his “Hug Program” to include the Internet as he developed the
website
www.drhuggiebear.com . His philosophy is and has always been that
doctors and healthcare individuals should treat patients as if they are
members of their own family. He knows firsthand that hugging provides a
human touch to any therapy that makes it more likely to succeed in
helping patients get well and lead healthy lives.
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