Nursing is such an interesting profession. Sometimes it is filled with the tragedy and frailty of human life. It can be so sad when a loved one dies, or a young person is permanently injured or scarred for life from medical treatments.
I began my nursing career working in oncology. My family didn’t understand why I would choose such a depressing place. I never did find it depressing. I found it to be full of caring people and funny people too.
I think it always helps to recognize that humans are funny and the medical profession provides great opportunities for humor. I mean really, where else but hospitals would you share a room with a complete strange, wear a backless gowns and discuss bodily functions over lunch?
Some of my fondest memories in my career happen to also be the funniest. Perhaps the one that can make me smile or chuckle on a really gray dismal day is how we coped with a really serious situation. We had a young patient who had a rare type of cancer and it spread to the pericardium. He was about to undergo placing a catheter into his pericardium in order to receive experimental chemotherapy. He went off to surgery and we nurses prepared the room for his return; had an open surgical bed, oxygen, heart monitors and IVs at the ready.
We got the phone call from surgery saying the “Heart’ was on its way up to us. Everyone scurried to be ready to transfer the patient back to the bed. Nurse’s were standing by the doorways and had the halls cleared because the “Heart was coming.” You can almost hear the marching of the nurse’s feet as they pushed the gurney on to the unit: bappity, bap, bap, bappity bap bap. And there was my friend. In preparation for the “Heart”, she had taken two oxygen masks, tied them together and draped them over her ears; she donned her shades, and grabbed two flashlights. With her skillful direction as an aircraft landing technician, she waved the gurney onto the unit and into the room across from the desk. Any airplane could have landed safely under her care. The nurses and the surgeon could hardly contain themselves to get the chuckling patient into bed.
I am sure other nurses can tell the tales of what they find to be funny. That humor has a great way of reducing the stress during what can be a tense time. Humor is sometimes a difficult medium to use when in stress because one has to be careful not to offend others or make them the butt of jokes. Here is another example of how a stressful situation became less stressful.
I cared for a lady who had a colostomy as a result of cancer. She was having problems getting her appliance to stick and her skin was an excoriated mess of raw red painful tissue. To make matters worse, she had diarrhea and we while we worked on maintaining her fluids and electrolytes, she continued to have problems. She put her call light on when the bag exploded in a mess. I sighed and went to help her get cleaned up. I worked hard and had her all neat and clean, fluffed and puffed when it happened.
She exploded again. She wanted to cry. We started over yet again.
Finally, I was preparing to leave the room with my armful of soiled linen, and you guessed it. Explosion! Massive amounts of brown goop everywhere! She uttered a four letter word that begins with S. I could only reply back, “Yep. That’s what it is.” The patient looked startled when I agreed with her assessment. Pretty soon she was laughing out loud at how ridiculous it had become. Soon she had the appliance on and I was through changing linen. Fortunately for the both of us, it was the final linen change of the evening.
Nurses have to be able to remain calm in emergencies and able to be compassionate when the time is right. Most importantly, they need to have a sense of humor in order to provide care across the continuum of human emotions.
Laughter can reduce stress and lighten workloads. It also provides a great way to make nursing a fun career.
From Co-Author:
Cheryl Pratt, RN, MA, CNAA
Practical Nursing Director
Mankato Campus