How Med­i­Cin­e­ma brings the mag­ic of movies to hos­pi­tal patients

When I first start­ed to go to the cin­e­ma solo dur­ing my time at uni­ver­si­ty, I was often plagued with doubts, main­ly due to the social stig­ma. At first I felt as though peo­ple were judg­ing me, won­der­ing if they were think­ing ​“That’s a bit odd isn’t it? Why go by your­self?” But these solo cin­e­ma trips helped ease a lot of anx­i­ety. The art of de-stress­ing cer­tain­ly becomes more com­plex as we get old­er, and in the age of the inter­net, the eas­i­est way to fight off anx­i­ety often appears to be scrolling until we realise hours have passed. The cin­e­ma expe­ri­ence has become a safe­ty blan­ket, not just for me, but for many who want to escape from real life for a few pre­cious hours.

The phys­i­cal aspect of attend­ing the cin­e­ma has ben­e­fits that we don’t typ­i­cal­ly realise. The con­cept of cin­e­ma ther­a­py is some­thing that isn’t wide­ly dis­cussed – in fact, most won’t know that it is a form of expres­sive ther­a­py, sim­i­lar to music and dance ther­a­pies. Segan’s Med­ical Dic­tio­nary describes this as a ther­a­py that ​“can be a cat­a­lyst for heal­ing and growth”. Most of the time we are self-pre­scrib­ing cin­e­ma ther­a­py with­out acknowl­edg­ing its exis­tence. You might have had a bad day at work, or sim­ply just need to shut off for a few hours and peer into oth­er worlds, whether based on real life or pure fantasy.

Recog­nis­ing the poten­tial of cin­e­ma as a lit­er­al force for good, Med­i­Cin­e­ma is a char­i­ty found­ed by Chris­tine Hill in 1996. The for­mer Chief Exec­u­tive was inspired after see­ing nurs­es at St Thomas’s Hos­pi­tal wheel­ing patient’s out­side in their beds to watch the boats go by – it looked like a cin­e­ma with patients watch­ing a film. The first of six Med­i­Cin­e­mas opened in 1999 at St Thomas’s Hos­pi­tal, and cur­rent sites include Newcastle’s Roy­al Vic­to­ria Infir­mary and Glasgow’s Roy­al Hos­pi­tal for Children/​Queen Eliz­a­beth Uni­ver­si­ty Hos­pi­tal. It has been recent­ly announced that through a gen­er­ous pledge between Para­mount Glob­al and Med­i­Cin­e­ma a con­ver­sion of an exist­ing lec­ture the­atre at Man­ches­ter Uni­ver­si­ty NHS Trust’s Oxford Road Hos­pi­tal Cam­pus has been green lit for 2026.

Sup­port­ed through pub­lic dona­tions and var­i­ous part­ner­ships (there is no cost to the NHS), Med­i­Cin­e­ma allows patients and their fam­i­lies to have time away from the vary­ing chal­lenges of being on a ward. With pro­grammes planned by the cen­tral Med­i­Cin­e­ma team along with input from the Cin­e­ma Man­agers, each screen­ing pro­vides nor­mal­i­ty for those going through a health­care jour­ney. There are up to 4 reg­u­lar screen­ings pro­grammed a week, with some screen­ings addi­tion­al­ly tai­lored for spe­cif­ic clin­i­cal groups such as the Advanced Prostate Can­cer Sup­port and Breast Can­cer Sup­port. Spe­cial screen­ings are also part of the pro­gramme – most recent­ly, patients at Med­i­Cin­e­ma Roy­al Hos­pi­tal for Chil­dren in Scot­land were treat­ed to a spe­cial vis­it from Padding­ton and actor Hugh Bon­neville for an advanced screen­ing of Padding­ton in Peru. Beth Keane, MediCinema’s Head of Ser­vice Design and Impact, says, ​“One of the most amaz­ing things about Med­i­Cin­e­ma is that we can help such a wide range of peo­ple. We can help peo­ple who are two, to lit­er­al­ly 100 years old.”

The screen­ings are avail­able for every­one, whether their hos­pi­tal stay is a few days or longer term. The team also meets those receiv­ing end of life care. ​“It’s incred­i­ble because we can help such a wide spec­trum of peo­ple in many dif­fer­ent ways. So that’s psy­choso­cial, psy­cho­log­i­cal and phys­i­o­log­i­cal and that has been a chal­lenge for us to try and dis­til the ways we can help,” Beth con­tin­ues. ​“We did some work on this and we found a set of key themes that kept emerg­ing. They were things like men­tal health, resilience, eas­ing stress, anxiety.”

Going to even just one screen­ing can have a trans­for­ma­tion­al effect on patients. Through ongo­ing research (2017−2024) Med­i­Cin­e­ma have found that 85% of atten­dees believe that the expe­ri­ence sup­ports men­tal health and helps peo­ple to cope. An addi­tion­al 94% say that it reduces the iso­la­tion felt in the hos­pi­tal. ​“My son was in a lot of pain after surgery. Hav­ing Med­i­Cin­e­ma to look for­ward to real­ly moti­vat­ed him to start mobil­is­ing and mov­ing which was just what the doc­tor asked him to do,” a par­ent of a Chelsea and West­min­ster patient said. ​“With­out Med­i­Cin­e­ma he would not have been as moti­vat­ed to get mov­ing and recover.”

Accord­ing to cin­e­ma ther­a­pist Bir­git Wolz, PhD, there are sev­er­al types of cin­e­ma ther­a­py: Pop­corn (cin­e­ma enter­tain that allows for an emo­tion­al release), Evoca­tive (which helps indi­vid­u­als con­nect with sto­ry­lines and char­ac­ters) and Cathar­tic (that helps an indi­vid­ual access their emo­tions and may be used in the ear­ly stages of psy­chother­a­py). Keane agrees that these three head­ings make sense. ​“I’ve def­i­nite­ly had patients speak of those things, they speak about the impact,” she said. ​“A lot of patients will be tak­en back [to their ward] by a vol­un­teer and they’ll talk about how their mood has changed after watch­ing the film. It might open up con­ver­sa­tions with the hos­pi­tal staff because film is a lev­eller. I want to shout about the fact that it extends beyond actu­al­ly watch­ing a film.”

While some patients may sim­ply go to Med­i­Cin­e­ma to have some nor­mal­i­ty to their day, some find that it gives them the abil­i­ty to ease the wor­ries and con­cerns of their treat­ment. One case study revolves around a lit­tle boy who was suf­fer­ing with anx­i­ety around hos­pi­tals and the mask they use when putting him to sleep when going into the­atre. ​“They [the patient and his mum] came to Med­i­Cin­e­ma togeth­er and they watched Dolit­tle. There is a spe­cif­ic scene where a lit­tle squir­rel called Kevin is injured and he’s put to sleep using a mask and when he wakes up he feels bet­ter.” Beth con­tin­ues. ​“The next day her son was due to go to surgery and he called him­self Kevin the squir­rel – for the first time they were able to go down to the the­atre look­ing and feel­ing more relaxed.”

Med­i­Cin­e­ma research indi­cates that 55% of par­tic­i­pants feel the phys­i­o­log­i­cal aspect of attend­ing a screen­ing has reduced their pain. From the engage­ment side of attend­ing a screen­ing, 72% agreed that they are more like­ly to vis­it a pub­lic screen­ing, out­side the Med­i­Cin­e­ma space. This alone proves the impor­tance of cin­e­mas in an era where stream­ing sites attempt to dom­i­nate the world order of the arts.

At this point, I would ordi­nar­i­ly write a con­clu­sion to bring to a close a fea­ture high­light­ing both the amaz­ing ben­e­fits of cin­e­ma, film and the work that Med­i­Cin­e­ma are con­tin­u­ing to do. But who bet­ter to prove the ben­e­fits than some­one who has expe­ri­enced it?, Yas­min, a patient who attend­ed screen­ings at CW+ Chelsea and West­min­ster Med­i­Cin­e­ma, beau­ti­ful­ly sums up the experience:

“My can­cer has been so hard on those who care about me, but when I get tak­en to the CW+ Med­i­Cin­e­ma, shown to my seat and made cosy, I’m not Yas­min with ter­mi­nal lung can­cer, I’m just ​‘me’ again and I blos­som, and, I’m excit­ed, and for a few hours we can just be friends and fam­i­ly enjoy­ing a movie again. It has meant every­thing to me. We are wreathed in escapism and the nurs­es and vol­un­teers are amaz­ing. I don’t wor­ry about a sin­gle thing. The team col­lect me and take me back to bed. My nurs­es see me come back with a big smile on my face.

“Med­i­Cin­e­ma is a gen­uine god­send, I wish all hos­pi­tals had one, I think it would do patients and staff, the nation over the world of good. I’ve seen patients wheeled in lying on beds wear­ing the biggest smiles. You can­not put a price on that. I’m so grate­ful to the gen­eros­i­ty of the film indus­try and the teams that make this hap­pen. Thank you for what you have done for me and the peo­ple I love. Long may you con­tin­ue, trans­form­ing the lives of movie goers great and small!”