“The Specialty Where Nurses Laugh the Most Is…”

picture NBNursery -New Nurses in orientation at attention>>3 boy newborns in their cribs in the station lined up for the “circs” Pediatrician age60-kind that doesnt joke around much so you think>>> shuffles in with his infection control gown on-untied – pencil sharpener under his arm with the cord dragging behind him -clip board also in hand- : ( Matter of factual questioning ) and says:”Well: Who is it that needs their pencil sharpened this morning.?” no smile ….just an inkling of the possibility he might be joking, dare you ask?

ER, no contest!

Med Surge Unit where anything can happen. Once had a 80+ y/o patient die. We prepared the body and cleared the room for family viewing. Called Dr. for pronouncement of death. 30 minutes later the Resident comes to the desk to confirm the right room and patient. His response was “she looks alright to me. Every nurse on the floor ran to that room and hysterical laughter when the patient says, “what’s the fuss all about?” We didn’t say we thought she was dead. The patient discharged days later.

It has to be Pediatrics, I am a Diabetes Educator and when attempting to involve the 10 year old in his care, I asked him where he got his insulin injections. When he answered, usually in the bathroom but sometimes in the kitchen both his Mom and I laughed so hard we cried. You gotta make it real, my little patient thought he was very clever . You should hear some of the other things these kids say. Love them to death.

I’ve been a School Nurse for over 20 years now and I love this environment. Where else can you deal with Kindergarteners who don’t know the difference between Vaseline and gasoline? (“Do you have gasoline, Mrs R.?” “Why do you need gasoline, Suzy?” Because my lips are dry.”)

As an ‘old’ ER nurse now in private practice as a pediatric nurse practitioner, I feel that laughter is crucial to survival. As noted below, laughter is a defense mechanism and a way to disassociate with the horror of some of the things that we see. Taking a 9 year old to the OR on a beautiful spring day after transfusing his blood volume x3 while dealing w the brain injury and the broken little body is a nightmare. Laughing and telling jokes afterwards while cleaning up the carnage in the trauma room is not insensitive, cruel or unprofessional. If you as a nurse find that to be the case, I am interested to know your scope of experience w the human condition. We can laugh WITH or patients and yeah–sometimes we laugh AT them in private. Why? Cause we are human and people do some really dumb stuff that you just can’t help but laugh at.

I don’t want to come across as a humorless old grouch, but opinion and advice always bring out the worst in everyone. So I will just say what I have to say and ask everyone to not judge me too harshly…

The situations that arise in medicine can be outrageously amusing to those who work in the field, possibly because of the frequency of our exposure to the degrees of foolishness which our fellow human beings are capable of when they think they are not going to be caught (for example, http://scicurious.scientopia.org/2013/05/31/friday-weird-science-the-concrete-enema/). When they ARE caught—and suffering the embarrassment, humiliation (and possibly pain) following the exposure of their foolishness—they are forced by fear of pain and the urgency of self-preservation to place their trust in trained and experienced strangers.

US. And do not forget that nurses are generally considered to be the most trusted professionals in human history (https://nurse.org/articles/gallup-ethical-standards-poll-nurses-rank-highest/).

What I am trying to say (and taking a lot of time to do so, I apologize) is that it is important to laugh only—ONLY—at the situation, and not at the person. With pediatrics, we laugh at the things kids do and say – not at the kids. In geriatric medicine, we must be careful to identify our laughter with the situations – not the elderly. In surgery, ER, OR, and the rest of medicine, the endless inventiveness of the human mind may be marveled at (and even safely found amusing) provided it does not become connected to any individual or segment of humankind.

The trust we have is essential to being able to do what we do. People place themselves in our care and expose themselves to us on the most personal level, allowing us—unknown strangers—to a closeness that exists only between lovers, or between parents and their small children. Whether the healthcare-seeking public ever openly holds us to this standard, we must protect this trust as we would protect anything else so precious, fragile, and irreplaceable.

We are all human and to laugh is human! For people who think that just because we are nurses that we can’t laugh or risk looking unprofessional? Come on, get real! It shows your patients that you are human and just like them. Life’s too short and super stressful. So relax and be human and for gods sake “Laugh” when you can. You might just make somebody else smile!

Kimberli
“a real person & RN”

No doubt it’s the ED. You cannot make up some of the stories we hear from patients. I once heard a 10 year old tell me how he got PlayDoh packed in his ear. Very embarrassed, he said that he was playing with the dog and just happened to fall on a pile of PlayDoh and the PlayDoh went into his ear.

Definitely peds. While working as a school nurse, I was once asked by a teacher to conduct an eye exam on a second grade student because he was holding his book right up to his face. The results of his exam were perfect, so I decided to ask him why he held the book so close. His reply….”Well, the name of the book IS math and focus, after all!!!!” 😂😂😂😂

OR for sure! The things we say in the OR would be taken out of context somewhere else. Like for example when you have someone scrubbing in but you have to get the patient and the say “Tie me up and spin me before you go” would not sound the same in the grocery store. Not to mention the things people say while going to sleep or under light sedation. Today I had a patient under light sedation and I was doing the Time Out and out of nowhere the patient asked if I was reading their death.

Labor & Delivery. In the throws of pain, all the family secrets come out! You find out who hates their mother-in-law, who is there having their boyfriends’ baby and not their husbands’, and all the little annoying quirks of the significant other, just to name a few! It’s very hard not to laugh at times!

It’s definitely the recovery room in the GI lab. Where and where else in life would you encourage that much flatulence?!

As a seasoned “old-school” nurse, I have worked in all areas of the hospital, doctor’s office, and school nursing too! It is not any area that is more comical, but how you perceive an event! I agree that laughter is the best medicine!! So, new nurses, be careful when and where you laugh, as it does show your professionalism.

The OR of course! Seeing cosmetic surgeries that are pointless…Or a grown man asking for his mama as he is coming out of anesthesia

All specialities! If you love your job, you find time to laugh. I have been a nurse for over 40 years and have worked in a variety of fields – ER, Med/Surg, Psych, Surgery, Peds, OB, IM, Geriatrics, Oupatient Ambulatory, and Physician Offices. I laughed in all jobs. I loved what I was doing, so picking one area over another…well, it is just too hard to say. If you love, you laugh!

Geriatrics / Long Term Care. If I could write a book…

I work in an Alzheimer’s/Dementia wing and absolutely love the residents. As someone else said, the inhibitions can be gone and we hear things from their past that can be hysterical or very sad. It explains a lot about who they are. We have one woman who has a pretty risqué past. The comments that come out of her mouth! But we laugh with them not at them.

I think that there are so many areas of nursing where there is plenty of laughing. I am a school nurse in an elementary school and have had my fair share and then some! I seriously wouldn’t change it for anything. These kids make me laugh every single day.

Laughter is an evolutionary response to nervousness. Humor is often how we deal with things that scare us. If you don’t laugh, you’ll cry. If I can’t laugh at the guy with the jar stuck up his butt, then I’ll break down because I have a human being with breakable glass stuck in his rectum. When I laugh, it’s because I Need to release the extreme tension in the ED. I don’t think that it’s natural to NOT laugh because it goes against human evolution. We joke and giggle away our fear and nervousness because, without that emotional outlet, no one COULD do this job. This isn’t about who’s patients are funnier; it’s about medical professionals sharing how they deal with death, injury, and illness without shutting down. I don’t know about anyone else, but other medical professionals are the only ones that I can talk to about the strain at work. “Civilians” are too horrified and can’t find these things funny because it’s too scary and it brings up their own terror at immortality. That’s part of what’s so magical about working in this field; we literally face death every day and laugh in his face while making pbtt noises. So, in conclusion, I’m going to laugh when a patient passes gas in my face as I clean poop of of them, giggle when I see household objects in places that they don’t belong, and chortle when I see an insanely broken bone. Frankly, anyone who has a problem with that, or wants to call me unprofessional, needs to go back to psych 101 and review their notes from nursing school about being non judgemenal

Hands down it’s the OR. I’ve been an OR Nurse for forty years and just when I think I’ve seen and heard it all, someone proves me wrong. It’s hilarious every day!

ED…You get everything, from the pregnant virgins (parents bedside) to the ‘how did that get there’ foreign bodies to psychs, seekers, escape artists, rowdy drunks, sobbing six foot sissies (if you’re so scared of needles how did you get all those tattoos?) and pet smugglers (ever seen the commotion caused by an escaped ferret?)

I got a lady who got knocked out of her boat by a sting ray (“so, there was this black cloud that appeared and just kept getting bigger and the next thing I know I was here!”) a teenager who chocked on a dorito and made his family taken to the ER because of the pain (it was an esophageal year) and all sorts of half assed shenanigans (ok, so you thought it would be cool to light that M80 with a blowtorch!?)

Love ER insanity. Couldn’t work anywhere else!

ICU A 30 year old unemployed alcoholic GI Bleeder. In walks his “wife.” On NO. In walks the REAL wife. All of a sudden they are on the floor, wig of the one flying and fists hitting. SECURITY!!!!

Or the Doctors office, who gave a work absence excuse to a patient for “terminal flatulation!!

Since laughter is the best medicine, i always used it to relax my patients in stressful situations. I helped the oncology manager develop a humor cart that had funny things in it, called the Komedy Kupboard! one of the Administrators of Nursing didn’t think that cancer was funny, and had us take it down. The patients knew we were still “funning it” & would ask for a Marx brothers video, or funny book as soon as they got to the oncology floor! thus we had laughter here!!

Psych – you need a sense of humor to survive!

Definitely the ED! You must have a weird, if not morbid sense of humor and find humor in “odd” places but if you do it’s the best place to be! You get your psych humor; the drunks; the patients high on their own drugs or meds we give them; the Peds and geriatric populations that are just cute and speak the truth and the big macho guys crying over needles. In the ED, you get to see everything you see in other areas as well as the stuff you’ll never see anywhere else!

I don’t find this article to be in good taste. We’re nurses, and yes we inwardly (and sometimes outwardly) laugh at/with people, but to make it a sport or competition is completely antithesis to what we stand for. This isn’t showing the world how great we are, or how much dignity we show people. This is saying, “look, we’re nurses and we love to laugh at people when they’re vulnerable.” Bad form.

I’m in with Peds- the kids do tattle on their folks (Daddy put beans in his nose) and sibs (Mike tried on mom’s dress) and misunderstand words (the “laugh-o-scope” wasn’t as funny as she thought it would be!)- plus we get to watch cartoons together. Kids are the most loving and understanding people- even when in pain or scared they bounce back faster than most grownups so we can get back to the fun stuff. Although when it’s bad there- it is the worst. I thought psych would be funnier but it’s really quite painful, we don’t usually see the patients once they feel happy again (they want to pretend we don’t exist) and 10 calls a day for more Xanax isn’t really a laughing matter.

Oh the ED is the most comical place. Where else can you get a “Technical” Tetanus shot, have”Fireballs on the Eucharist” Fibrous cysts on the Uterus, or “Screaming men and Jesus” for Scarlet Meningitis?

Oh and I have to add, kids narc out their parents all the time! We ask, does anyone smoke in the house? The parent says Oh no we would never smoke in the house…and the child will pipe up saying UhUh Mom you always smoke in the kitchen when you have coffee.

Kida have some pretty funny comments. One little girl told me her Dad used to be a truck driver, but now…he is just a jerk. Like he just changed jobs according to her.
Or the little guy I was asking about what he liked to eat and what he didn’t like to eat and he was struggling to think of answers, so I ask, what would be really gross to you if your Mom served it for dinner…he loudly announced Chicken Bones. I agree, I don’t think I would care for chicken bones for dinner either!
Or the little gal who kept looking around the WIC office, peeking in every corner, and finally whispered to Mom, where is the witch doctor? It seems mother said we are going to the WIC office to see the Dr.

I have two areas, the #1 is the surgery ward: where do you find a patient returning one week later s/p a penis implant because his wife wannted to test one week later. Lol.
#2 Immunization: everybody runs when needle shows up.

The OR- hands down is the funniest place ever! One never knows what people will say when the patients are all unconscious.

I think that it has to be Disabilities and Special Needs. My patients are all so precious. They are so happy all the time, you have to be happy too! It is the Greatest Nursing Job I have ever had. I Love It!

med surg, the patient with a vibrator stuck in his rectum.

Geriatric Psych ward, my first time as a new grad/ intern made an indelible impression.on me especially the time my 90 yr old patient surprised me with rolling her eyes round like she was juggling her eyeballs at a circus