Tiffany Bryant didn't learn magic during her medical training, but the nurse can make a baby's bellybutton squeak or a cherry sucker mysteriously appear.

Her best tricks, however, are the ones that go unseen by the pint-size patients she entertains in the infectious-diseases unit of Children's Hospital.

"What we try to do is make a child's anxiety about being in the hospital disappear," she said.

Such a vanishing act is something that staff

members hope will happen more often now that they've picked up simple tricks from a central Ohio magician.

Last month, entertainer David McCreary, 35, showed doctors, nurses and technicians how a little hocus-pocus builds trust with youngsters and eases their apprehension.

McCreary, host of the Ohio Lottery show Make Me Famous, Make Me Rich, taught five basic illusions to 116 staff members through a series of workshops.

The father of a 7-year-old son, he is keenly aware of the dread that some children develop.

"All Sebastian notices when he walks into an office is all the medical instruments," McCreary said. "They've needed two nurses to hold my son down for a simple strep test."

Two years ago, after one of his shows, he met Jeri Jean Ferre, information-services manager at Children's. Eventually he approached the hospital with his magical idea.

After one of the May sessions, the training was given high marks.

"The name of the game in our business is distraction, and this kind of stuff is great," said Cathleen Opperman, a nurse and staff-development specialist.

In her 22 years at Children's, she has seen tears from tiny patients awaiting a lumbar puncture to draw fluid from the spine.

For many, she said, the anticipation is as painful as the procedure.

"They know what's coming," said Opperman, who can make a cotton ball disappear from a tabletop and reappear from behind a patient's ear.

"If you can take their minds off it with a magic trick, then maybe it gets them thinking about something else."

Various forms of distraction have been around almost as long as needles and tongue depressors.

Some anesthesiologists at Rainbow Babies & Children's Hospital in Cleveland entertain patients with juggling and magic, spokesman George Stamatis said.

Yet the Cleveland hospital and others in Ohio for children don't provide the training that Children's in Columbus has, according to officials.

One recent afternoon, Bryant popped into the room of Shyann Butcher -- a 5-year-old girl from Harts, W.Va., with dermatomyositis, a muscular disease.

Bryant, clad in Cookie Monster scrubs, asked to examine her bellybutton. As she pressed the child's stomach with her index finger, the nurse also squeezed a small, plastic squeaker in her palm.

Shyann smiled immediately.

Moments later, Bryant produced a sucker from under the girl's arm.

"I think it's really cool they go to this length to make her (Shyann) feel comfortable," said her mother, Melissa Conley. "The magic is a real icebreaker."

As her body parts continued to squeak, the little girl in pink pajamas caught on to the ruse.

"You're doing that," Shyann said to the smiling nurse.

Like other budding entertainers, Bryant rehearses new material with friends and family -- such as the cotton-ball routine with son Braxton, 2.

The payoff is worth the practice devoted to performing tricks effortlessly, the staff thinks.

The techniques work best, said child-life specialist Janine Zabriskie, with the youngest patients -- "the ones who think there is still magic in the world."

"If you get a kid to smile and forget about the anxiety, that's what it's all about."

treed@dispatch.com

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