COLUMBUS, Ga. (WRBL)— Hundreds of kids and their teddies made their way through Piedmont Columbus Regional Saturday during the second annual Teddy Bear Clinic.

Kids were able to check their teddy in to get their labs taken, temperature checked, and much more all to mitigate the anxiety that comes when visiting the doctor.

“They’ll go to pre-op, triage, get an X-ray done, go to surgery, casting and the pharmacy to get their shot. So, all the things that kind of scare kids when they have to come to the Children’s Hospital because they don’t know what’s going on,” Jessie Brown, Children’s Miracle Network Officer for Piedmont Columbus Regional told WRBL. “This is a way for kids to learn about it through their teddy bears or stuffed animals in a fun way and also educate the families here as well.”

Noah Luker, 3, is familiar with Piedmont’s Children’s Hospital. With an autoimmune disorder, Saturday was an opportunity for him to see all the hospital had to offer.

“Just back in early June he was a week-long in the hospital and he got to experience this, unfortunately, firsthand. An event like this today is able to show him that there’s so much more that doctors and nurses do outside of just what his current ailments are,” Noah’s mother Monica Luker said. “I just think that the lessons that it teaches our children that it’s not always a bad thing and it’s healthy and it a positive thing for you to go to the doctor and get checked out, make sure you are healthy. I just think this is such a wonderful experience.”

Various medical staff from the departments within the Children’s Hospital ran the clinic, they say events like Saturday’s make their job worth it.  

“I had a nurse say like, ‘this is what makes it all worth it.’ At the end of the day, that’s all we want to do is make our community happy and make our patients comfortable and happy here when they come to our Children’s Hospital, and this is a way for us to do that,” Brown said.

In addition to learning about the children’s hospital, several community partners were in attendance. Columbus Fire & EMS were showing kids inside the firetrucks and ambulances.