Humor in Health Care

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The impact of humor on a person’s well-being has been well documented and presented throughout this text. Whether it be within the context of intimate relationships, platonic relationships, or with acquaintances, the appeal of humor and humorous messages is ubiquitous not only in western culture, but throughout the world. However, there are few contexts and situations where the use of humor serves as many functions as it does within health care. Humor within health care has the potential, unlike other contexts such as romantic relationships or relationships in the workplace, to serve a host of unique functions. These functions emerge as a result of the unique situations and structure found in health care. More specifically, the health care system is a vast bureaucracy that entails specialized personnel, each trained to deliver a specialized form of health care and do so in coordination with other specialized personnel. Many of these specialized personnel work directly with the patient. In fact, 80 percent of medical care given to a patient is administered by nonphysicians (Kizer, 2002). The result of a patient having such diverse interactions with many people trained in different aspects of medical care is the possibility for a patient to form many different types of relationships. Whatever relationships are forged, they are predicated on the unique feature that such relationships are not necessarily of one’s choosing but of necessity that can have life-and-death consequences for the patient.