Laugh, and the world laughs with you. Fart, and they stop laughing.
Our focus on Colon Cancer awareness month presents us with a challenge: so much of the humor — the jokes that crack us up! — center around things that we, in polite society (or what passes for polite society) simply don’t talk about. Farting, bodily fluids, and the sheer joy of having a large camera and a surgical team get up close and personal with your colon aren’t really dinner time conversation.
Unless, of course, you’re a nurse. In that case, there’s no limit on what you’re willing to talk about, even while wolfing down what the cafeteria assures you is chili con carne. A true sign that you’ve ‘arrived’ as a nurse is the ability to clear diners from the NEXT table at the restaurant, simply by talking shop…but that’s not what we’re talking about today.
When we’re talking with colleagues, peers, and those loved ones who are well used to our stories about death, dismemberment, and slip-sliding our way through a Code Brown, almost everything is fair game. But what happens when we’re talking with our patients? Is humor appropriate, especially during procedures like colonscopies, where the patient may feel ill at ease and uncomfortable?Each circumstance is different, and you’ll want to use your assessment skills to ensure that humor will be welcomed by the patient. That being said, it could be argued that humor is not only appropriate during potentially embarrassing moments for the patient, it’s essential. Here’s why:
Humor Eliminates Heirarchies
Being able to laugh with someone places you, for the moment, on the same social plane. You’ve found a point of commonality. This is important, because in many cases, there’s a significant imbalance between the perceived authority, power, and status of the medical team and that of the patient. A patient who is without their clothes, being touched in ways they’re quite unaccustomed to, and fresh from the ‘wonderful’ prep process can feel more than a little vulnerable due to this imbalance. Using humor can address that imbalance, and help the patient feel more at ease.
Humor Addresses Fear
We can never lose sight of the fact that some of these procedures are exceptionally frightening to the patient. It’s different from the other side of the curtain: we can talk about something being routine — but for the patient, it is anything but. There’s a level of anxiety and nervousness that many patients struggle to address: a joke about having a new tunnel to Brooklyn installed can be a clumsy way to articulate fears about how one’s body will react and change as a result of the procedure. As nurses, we need to be able to recognize and support these efforts.
Humor Transforms Embarrassing Experiences
For many patients, the most traumatic portion of the procedure happens during the recovery period. We take the melodious sounds of escaping gas in stride, but for some patients, this is beyond mortifying. Having a nurse gently but humorously acknowledge this can help ease the situation: sometimes you have to let the patient know that there are things you simply can’t contain for a more private setting. The patient who can regard the ‘unseemly’ fart as nothing more than something to laugh about has an easier time than the one who wants to hide under the covers every time it happens.
Why don’t we use humor more?
Fear of offending a patient runs very high on the list of reasons why we don’t use humor more. Additionally, there’s a mindset that some topics are just not funny: that indulging in a good fart joke renders the nurse unprofessional, sophomoric, and just generally uncool.
Leveraging your nursing skills — including humor — in an appropriate fashion is actually the height of professionalism. The question of sophistication is another issue entirely: every one has their own personal comfort level. But it could be argued that Benjamin Franklin, one of the founding Fathers of this country, international diplomat, inventor, and more was a fairly sophisticated fellow — and yet he still managed to write Fart Proudly. There’s a time and a place for everything, and for nurses, the time for fart jokes is when they’ll help your patients the most!
