Looking for inspiration, information on the use of humor in the clinical setting or just a good laugh? Check out these links:
5 Ways To Stay Upbeat in a Stressful Work Environment
GI Nursing: Does it Make Your Ears Wiggle?
Ha! 5 Ways Laughter Makes You Healthy
YOUTUBE VIDEO OF THE WEEK!
Have a link to share? Leave it in the comments, or mail it to Cindy@journalofnursingjocularity.com and we’ll share it with everyone!
We interrupt today’s regularly scheduled funny programming to bring you news about the Joplin, MO tornado. As you may have heard, a deadly tornado has hit Joplin, including a direct hit to St. John’s Regional Medical Center. Other facilities in the area, including a nursing home, were hit as well. The devastation is unbelievable.
Right now, the best source of information we can find on how to help respond to this emergency is here. We’ll be updating the site with more information as it becomes available. If you have any information on how nurses could help respond, please share it in the comments!
Read JNJ Publisher Karyn Buxman‘s column Deja You: Dealing With Familiar Faces in Nursing
May is here, and you know what that means! It’s National Nurses’ Week! Nurses’ Week is a time to celebrate everything that makes nursing as a profession distinctive and unique, to reflect and rejoice in the very real difference we make in the lives of our patients – and in the lives of the people we work with everyday.
Christine Belle said, “Our job as nurses is to cushion the sorrow and celebrate the joy, everyday, while we are just doing our jobs.” How true is that? Being a nurse puts us directly in the center of some of life’s most dramatic moments – the arrival of a child, the end of life, the discovery that there is no amount of mentos and diet Coke that you can ingest that will enable you to fly – and we’re there to do more than bear witness. We help ease pain, alleviate confusion, and provide valuable emotional support – on top of the everyday work of helping and healing. Amazing! (more…)
Recently, a string of deadly tornados raced through Alabama and neighboring states, causing unprecedented damage. Many towns are almost entirely destroyed. The impact on the affected communities is tremendous. Emergency response teams and local medical personnel have been working tirelessly to meet the demands of this crisis. As you can imagine, more help is always welcome and right now is especially needed. . Click here to learn what opportunities are available for nurses to volunteer their help: How to Help
E.B. White famously said, “Analyzing humor is a bit like dissecting a frog. Few people are interested and the frog dies of it.”
We’ll just have to disagree! The study of why we laugh is among the most fascinating of endeavors. Why in the world does the sight of someone getting a pie in the face make people laugh? How come some people love puns and others loathe them? What’s the deal with the Three Stooges?
Some people believe that there are complex evolutionary forces at work shaping our sense of humor. Inside Jokes: Using Humor to Reverse-Engineer the Mind
April is National Humor Month, a country wide celebration of the many ways humor makes our lives better. We’re lucky to live in a time opportunities to laugh abound. From simple silly moments to the most sophisticated comedies, we’re surrounded by humor. Sometimes it takes standing on our heads to be able to see the humor, but it’s there!
And of course, we never run out of reasons to need a laugh. Humor is a great resource to get us through tough times – something to remember as Tax Day draws near! As nurses, we need strength and resiliency to make it through the day (or the shift, or the hour, or the next time the call button is pressed…) The ability to identify and enjoy humorous moments throughout the day gives us a much needed chance to recharge our mental batteries.
Dad always laughter was the best medicine, which I guess is why several of us died of tuberculosis. – Jack Handy, Saturday Night Live (more…)
A recent examination of the JNJ Library reminded us of one our favorite cartoon collections:Suture Self: A Book of Medical Cartoons by New Yorker Cartoonist
Leo Cullum created these cartoons while battling colon cancer, with some gentle (and not so gentle!) jabs at the medical industry.This is a second opinion- I thought you had something else! one caption reads. Cullum’s cartoons are good for an instant (if sometimes wry!) smile.
Earlier this year, I had to have a colonscopy. When I arrived, the nurse asked me for my identification.
Talk about mind blowing! (Everything else had already been cleaned out!)
Do they really have people trying to weasel in on other people’s colonscopies, impersonating patients to have their share of scope time? You have to wonder. It’s not how I’d volunteer to spend my time, that’s for sure! But when you take into account the prevalence of colon cancer, and the role early detection plays – well, sometimes a nurse has to do what a nurse has to do!
If you’re in the right age range, make sure to have your test scheduled soon: we need every one of our readers. (more…)
Here we are in February, with hearts and flowers everywhere we look. Of course, the images that we’re being bombarded with aren’t anatomically correct, but that’s alright – you can pack more chocolates into the box with the ‘traditional’ design!
And isn’t that what the holiday is all about? Chocolate, in all of the wonderful flavors and shapes and marvelous vending machines that never run out, even in the middle of a shift-that-just-won’t-stop…
Some people are surprised by nurses’ devotion to chocolate. After all, we’re health care providers. We’re doing our best to make sure everyone’s fit as a fiddle. So how can we advocate so strongly for chocolate?
Chocolate is made from cocoa beans. It’s obviously a vegetable. Vegetables are good for you. Mystery solved!
Of course, February isn’t entirely about romance, or as we call it, chocolate. It’s also National Heart Month, a celebration of all things cardiac. Throughout the month, we’ll be sharing great heart humor as we find it, and encourage you to send in your favorite joke about the old ticker.
To get things started, here’s a perennial favorite (and just in time for tax season!)
A new arrival, about to enter hospital, saw two white coated doctors searching through the flower beds.
“Excuse me,” he said, “have you lost something?”
“No,” replied one of the doctors. “We’re doing a heart transplant for an income-tax inspector and want to find a suitable stone.”
