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How to Improve Patient Smileage
From Journal of Nursing Jocularity, Summer 1991, 1(2), pp 46-47.Hello again. Are you enjoying the comic relief from laughing at some of our problems? If you are like most nurses, you're beginning to wonder how you can start to use this humor tool with your patients. As with most nursing care plans, you should begin by establishing goals, completing an assessment, developing a plan for intervention. and then evaluating the effects and progress. The following is a sample.
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Long Term Goal:
- Patient actively seeks opportunities for humor and laughter in his/her
life.
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Short Term Goal:
- Patient responds with smiles, chuckles, and laughter to humorous stimuli.
Patient admits to feeling more relaxed after laughter.
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Assessment:
- Complete a "funnybone history" (Herth). Explore patient's favorite
comedian, sources of humor in life, favorite joke, etc. Observe the exchange
of humor between patient and his/her family and friends during hospital
visits.
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Plan:
- Motivate patient to include humor and laughter as an adjunct to traditional
medical or psychological treatment regime. Give patient opportunities to
laugh by offering prepared humor in different formats (audio, video, reading,
visual, tactile). Use funnybone history to guide your choice of material.
- Interventions:
- Teach patient about harmful physiological effects of fear, anxiety, hopelessness, depression, etc.
- Explain to patient about new research indicating that humor and positive
emotions facilitate recovery and enhance immune system.
- Tell patient a joke. Be sure your material is tasteful and appropriate.
Avoid sexual, religious, or ethnic jokes, as these may offend.
- Describe a cartoon you enjoyed or show it to patient.
- Collect funny get well cards, protect them with plastic covers and
share them with patients. Wipe with Hibiclens to decontaminate.
- Wear a funny button, nose or hat. Create a humor basket filled with
funny props, keep at nurses' station for staff to select from (see
article by Cathy Johnson).
- Form an interdisciplinary humor committee of interested people who
appreciate and use humor.
- Seek philosophical and financial support from your administration.
Explain cost effective influence of improved customer relations and possible
decreased length of stay.
- Obtain funding from local community service organizations such as
Rotary, Lions, Junior League.
- Elicit cooperation and support of your hospital auxiliary; be sure
to include them on your committee.
- Establish an in-house "Chuckle Channel". If you have a
centralized output source for video programming into patient's TVs, then
distribute a timed schedule of humorous audio or video selections that will
be featured (see Postings in Bubbly-ography).
- Create a "Comedy Cart", Humor Room, or lending library. This will be discussed in detail in a later column.
I hope this has given you some inspiration, ideas and incentive so that you can begin to bring more humor and laughter into your work setting and share it with your patients and coworkers. In the next issue, I will discuss the physiological benefits of laughter.
This article was originally published in "Jest for the Health of It", a regular feature in the Journal of Nursing Jocularity. Copyright Patty Wooten.
Feature columnist Patty Wooten, BSN, is also a past President of the American Association for Therapeutic Humor, author of two books related to humor, and a national speaker presenting on the benefits of humor.
