Humor in The Medical Field

Doctors, physician’s assistants, nurses, therapists, and surgeons are high caliber occupations in the medical field that require extensive training, which has the potential to unlock a new capacity for medicine and offer a new approach to dealing with treatment. Visiting the doctor or hospital is certainly not regarded as a trip to look forward to. People go and are cared for and treated, however, being at the hospital brings tremendous feelings of anxiety, confusion, and fear for many people (The Hospital Experience). This stress can be avoided, and there can even be added benefits with a re-evaluation of how students in the medical field are trained and where the emphasis is being placed. Humor, in all forms, is an essential and often overlooked component of the medical field. Doctors must be educated to help patients feel more welcomed and trusting of their doctors. Humor can also improve the patient’s conditions, both mentally and physically, when used in a productive and respectful way.

Doctors and healthcare providers must be educated about the importance of humor in the medical field and how to use it in a productive and respectful way. Medical education is not just about learning biological processes, medical conditions, medications and treatment; a large portion of the training is focused on patient care and interaction. Chiang-Hanisko, an associate professor and RN wrote, “Yura-Petro (1991) identified humor as an important basic human need that should be considered when nurses plan and evaluate patient care” (2009, p.53). Humor is a component of patient care that requires training, as there is a right and a wrong way of incorporating it. Doctors need to know how to interact respectfully with people who are from different cultures, people who have different beliefs, and people who are in a tremendous amount of pain. Humor can be an asset in the medical field when used effectively. However, if used improperly can lead to numerous consequences. According to research in cultural differences in therapeutic humor in nursing education, “when cultural values differ, understanding attitudes toward humor and appropriate and inappropriate uses of humor in various social interactions may be difficult” (Chiang-Hanisko, 2009, p.53). Judging if a certain approach of humor is appropriate for a situation is difficult to navigate in terms of doctor-patient interaction without having cultural sensitivity and extensive training. Doctors, being under a tremendous amount of stress, can easily speak without thinking, and crack a joke that could be offensive to the patient. If a patient is somehow personally offended by the hospital they are receiving treatment from, this can lead to tremendous consequences including a lawsuit in extreme circumstances. In this way, it can be easy to see humor as having a negative influence in the medical field. People may argue that it creates hostility and miscommunications, but when used with caution it can have the opposite effect. Hospitals work long hours and for many years to develop a reputation of success and reliability. These cultivated pristine images can potentially be destroyed by the maltreatment of their patients which can easily be avoided by proper training for the doctors and healthcare providers. According to an article about language by Lorelei Lingard, “Researching nursing faculty teaching practices and viewpoints of therapeutic humor may help reveal cultural differences in the use of humor in healthcare settings” (Lingard, 2013, pg.1). It is important for further research to be done about what current education is being administered in terms of communicating with patients, as well as ways healthy humor can be integrated into the training. It is imperative that doctors and healthcare providers are educated from the start about just how important humor is in the medical field and how to use it in a productive and respectful way.

One significant reason that there needs to be specific training on using humor in medical settings is that it helps to create more of a welcoming environment for patients and ultimately allows for a more trusting relationship between patients and their physicians, as well as between physicians. Complete functionality of a hospital depends on how pleased patients are with their care and how comfortable they feel. What interferes with this comfort is how society views hospitals, and that is with a negative connotation. According to a documentary about hospital experiences, “The hospital experience provokes anxiety for so many people because of fear of the unknown. Many patients feel that they are not able to say anything and that they lose control of their lives when they go into a hospital” (The Hospital Experience, 2006). By simply being in a hospital, many people become on edge because they are not in a familiar environment and they are out of their comfort zones. Doctors can be intimidating people and it can sound like they are speaking in a different language when they use medical terminology and complicated explanations. This makes patients feel uneasy and ultimately it hinders their trust in their doctors. Humor in hospitals, however, can act as a bridge to reaching the patients at their level, in a way they understand. According to Chiang-Hanisko, “This form of communication may be more spontaneous and relaxed between two parties, such as nurse and patient, and can help release tension, avoid conflict, reduce hostility, and foster verbal dialogue” (2009, p.58). Humor is a form of communication that people use with their friends and family members which creates comfortable interactions. If this form of communication is brought into the medical field, patients will begin to feel more comfortable about being at hospitals and they will trust their doctors. The patient’s anxieties will be reduced drastically and hospitals will begin to be viewed as less hostile and more welcoming. As stated in an article about humor in patient care, “Just one of many ways to reach out to patients, humor can help them through their fears and loneliness to make them feel better, if only for a little while” (Osterlund, 1983, p.46). Being in the hospital is a unique experience, and along with it comes many emotions including fear of what’s happening to them, fear of what is going to come of them, fear of the pain, loneliness in the hospital bed, and overall stress. Humor in hospitals helps to lighten the environment and to make the patients feel more at ease. Their doctors appear more friendly and welcoming when they crack little jokes, and this ultimately makes them seem trustworthy. humor not only creates productive interactions between physicians and patients.

However, humor not only creates productive interactions between physicians and patients.

On top of building the relationship between patients and doctors, it also helps develop relationships between coworkers in medical settings, resulting in a more welcoming environment for the patients. Lingard states in an article about medical language that“silence and humour appear at critical moments in medical education. They emerge in moments of tension; they are used to foster community; they participate in power relations” (2013, p. 3). Hospitals are tense environments as everyone working there must be ready to act and react quickly when new situations arise. If physicians are not prepared for this, this environment can bring about conflict between physicians due to the buildup of stress. Humor is one of the solutions to this issue and the key to crafting healthy relationships between physicians for it allows the stress and pain of the job to not be internalized. They are able to make light of difficult situations by deferring their emotions from negative thoughts to a more positive outlook. This positivity is contagious to the patients and will undoubtedly make them feel more comfortable and welcomed in hospitals and clinics. It is essential for doctors, nurses, therapists, and everyone in the medical field to be educated about the importance of humor in medical settings for its effect is immeasurably more than the effort of training. Humor fosters doctor-patient relationships, co workers relationships, creates a more warm and welcoming environment, and most importantly decreases anxiety tied to the act of visiting a hospital. Humor not only offers comfort mentally, for it also has the potential to physically improve the condition of the patient.

Humor not only offers comfort mentally, for it also has the potential to physically improve the condition of the patient. In the medical setting, humor has the capability, if doctors are trained correctly, to help the patients wellbeing improve by decreasing the effects of their condition, reducing recovery time, and provide a coping mechanism through a difficult time. Laugher and joy are widely underestimated for their effects on the human body, for it runs deeper than just a smile on the face. In a scholarly article about the affects humor has on the human body, Wanda Christie and Carole Moore write of laughter laughter as an internal jogging mechanism because it stimulates all physiologic systems. Laughter is a healthy way to reduce stress, provide a sense of control, and help the body relax” (Christie & Moore, 2005, p.211). When a person laughs, there is a rush of hormones that are able to produce lasting effects on that person’s mood as well as their body. Humor is a simple all-natural alternative to medicine because is not always the the best way to relax a person’s mind and reduce stress. It also has the ability to reduce pain and improve overall wellness long term. In the same article, Christie and Moore state, “Berk et al. (2001) found that laughter caused increased natural killer cell (NKC) activity and increased immunoglobulin G and immunoglobulin M levels for as many as 12 hours” (2005, p.211). Humor and laughter does not simply bring the benefit of joy and stress relief for these same researchers “concluded that these elevations following either laughter or other humorous encounters may provide beneficial health effects” (Christie & Moore, 2005, p.212). These effects include improving patients’ suffering from a variety of different medical conditions, and making their battle less challenging. It is essential for doctors to be trained in how to engage different types of humor and different approaches, depending on the person they are treating, in order to have a maximum outcome.

Humor can also be used as a coping mechanism, as well as provide relief to symptoms of depression. Everyday, people’s loved ones, parents, children, friends, and relatives are sent to the hospital for a variety of different reasons and it often comes without warning, along with these situations, depending on the condition, comes with an immense amount of grief. Sometimes people have to hear the news that they, or a loved one, are dying and this information comes with nearly an unbearable amount of grief. Grief also comes with injuries and surgeries and diseases as they lead people to question and worry about how it will affect their lives. These occurrences interfere with plans people have for their lives and put them in a situation they never thought they would be in. There needs to be a healthy way to cope with this confusion and grief and a part of this solution is humor. As stated in the Journal of Nursing Research, “The use of humor as a coping mechanism is well supported in the literature” (As Cited in Chiang-Hanisko, 2009, p.53). Humor diverts the attention from the grief and pain and preoccupies it with a rush of hormones and a feeling of joy. These hormones also bring relief, even if only slightly, from the debilitating symptoms of depression. As stated in a psychology report from West Chester University, “there has been support for the emotionally therapeutic value of humor as a coping mechanism, as a relief of tension, as a survival mechanism, and as a defense against depression ” (As Cited in Deaner & McConatha, 1993, p.756). Depression is an overwhelming sadness and feeling of isolation and humor can act as a defense mechanism against feeling the full affect of it. On top of humor being a survival mechanism, it is also found and reported by Deaner and McConatha that, “heart rate, respiration, and oxygen exchange are increased during laughter. This state of arousal is incompatible with the most common physiological symptoms of depression ” (1993, p.756). Doctors and therapists must be educated in appropriate uses of humor in coping situations and depression patients, for example when it is the right time and how to approach it. This is necessary in order to reach the patient where they are. They must be sensitive to what they are going through and attentive to their needs at that moment, otherwise humor could end up being harmful.

Humor can also be useful in the later stages of life in dementia patients in aspects of both coping and the release of tension. Dementia is a progressive disease that leads to the lack of brain function and this is very difficult for both the patient and their family. This disease is incurable, however, as stated in an article about complementary and alternative medicine article, “Laughter is the most inexpensive and most effective wonder drug. Laughter is a universal medicine’” (Takita & Hashimoto, 2010, p.2).

Humor and laughter are all natural and have adverse effects on the body that do prove to be beneficial to dementia patients. However, because the symptoms of dementia are irreversible and extremely progressive, the amount of time humor is productive and effective is limited. The same article states that “The ability to laugh for social communication is readily lost by dementia patients at the onset of their illness…but laughter in response to the release of tension is preserved until the advanced stages of the disease” (Takita & Hashimoto, 2010, pg.5). With dementia comes the slow degradation of social awareness and responsiveness, so laughing and humor serves a very different purpose that lasts to the late stages of the disease. This purpose is the release of tension from the body in the response to the changing awareness of the world around them. Humor is by no means a cure for dementia, rather it is complementary treatment. According to Shinji M. Takashi, such treatments “control symptoms and improve well-being and quality of life” (p.1, 2010). Humor helps dementia patients to transition throughout the stages of their disease, and ultimately makes it easier on the families. However, it is still difficult to navigate as “Humor is delicate and sensitive by nature. Humor can be properly appreciated when it is expressed in the right time, right place, and on the right occasion” (Takita & Hashimoto, 2010, pg.5). Dementia patients are more sensitive and have a more difficult time reading situations. For this reason, it is critical that all people working with this condition are trained extensively in the best ways to communicate with the patients and how to implement humor into their treatment.

Humor is a simple, yet often overlooked aspect of communication in the medical field for it is much more than just smiling from a good joke. Humor leads to laughter and a rush of hormones that have the capability to help patients in a variety of different ways. It is urgent that medical schools start focusing on humor in the training for patient care for it has the potential help patients to feel more welcomed at hospitals and trusting of their doctors, as well as physically improve the wellbeing of the patients and improve their condition.

References

Chiang-Hanisko, Lenny, Kathleen Adamle, and Ling-Chun Chiang. “Cultural Differences in Therapeutic Humor in Nursing Education.” Journal of Nursing Research, vol. 17, no. 1, 2009, pp. 52–61, MEDLINE, http://ovidsp.ovid.com/ovidweb.cgi?T=JS&NEWS=n&CSC=Y&PAGE=fulltext&D=ovft&AN=00134372-200903000-00008, doi:10.1097/JNR.0b013e3181999da3.

Christie, Wanda, and Carole Moore. “The Impact of Humor on Patients with Cancer.” Clinical Journal of Oncology Nursing, vol. 9, no. 2, 2005, pp. 211–218, MEDLINE, http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/15853164, doi:10.1188/05.CJON.211–218

Deaner, Stephanie L., and Jasmin T. McConatha. “The Relation of Humor to Depression and Personality” Psychol Rep, vol. 72, no. 3, 1993, pp. 755–763.

Lingard, Lorelei. “Language Matters: Towards an Understanding of Silence and Humour in Medical Education.” Medical Education, vol. 47, no. 1, 2013, pp. 40–48, MEDLINE, http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/medu.12098/abstract, doi:10.1111/medu.12098.

OSTERLUND, HOB. “Humor A Serious Approach to Patient Care.” Nursing, vol. 13, no. 12, 1983, pp. 46–47, MEDLINE, http://ovidsp.ovid.com/ovidweb.cgi?T=JS&NEWS=n&CSC=Y&PAGE=fulltext&D=ovft&AN=00152193-198312000-00019.

Takashi, M., Shinji, T., Masayasu, O., Takashi, K., Ryota, H., Masatoshi, T., . . . Toshihisa, T. (2010). Laughter and humor as complementary and alternative medicines for dementia patients. BMC Complementary and Alternative Medicine, 10(1), 28. doi:10.1186/1472–6882–10–28

Takeda, Masatoshi, et al. “Laughter and Humor as Complementary and Alternative Medicines for Dementia Patients.” BMC Complementary and Alternative Medicine, vol. 10, no. 1, 2010, pp. 28, MEDLINE, http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/20565815, doi:10.1186/1472–6882–10–28.

The hospital experience / information television network. Films for, t. H., Information, T. N. and Films for, t. H. (Directors). (2006).[Video/DVD] New York, N.Y.: New York, N.Y. : Films Media Group.