humor Archives - Off the Charts

But Where Are You Really From?

Anne Lano will graduate from a family nurse practitioner program next month.

As a five-year-old adoptee from Korea who grew up in the primarily white world of central Nebraska, I often wished, as a child, that I could look like everyone else. Early on, I was often confused or hurt by the unthinking remarks I received. Neighborhood boys teased me about my eyes. When I was in my teens, a woman in the locker room turned in my direction and said, slowly and loudly, “Welcome to America!” When I was sure she was talking to me, I said, “Uh, thanks! You too?!”

While I was chasing my kids around the playground, another little girl climbed up a ladder close to me. When she was eye level with me, she brightly said, “Hola!” It took me a second to realize she thought I was Hispanic, but I chuckled and, with a smile said, “Hola!” back to her. Likewise, at a friend’s relative’s house, a woman claimed that I look just like someone she knew. She searched all her photo albums to show me a picture of an Asian man who, in my opinion, looked […]

Guest Author2021-04-28T09:30:57-04:00April 28th, 2021|Nursing, nursing stories|1 Comment

Culture as a Key to Health

By Beth Toner, MJ, RN, senior communications officer, Robert Wood Johnson Foundation

(Video caption: The Dakota are a horse tribe, and Charley, a retired reservation policeman, takes care of abandoned horses, connecting them to the tribe’s youth to help the young redefine themselves in relation to tribal history. Video used by permission; produced by Purple States LLC with support from the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation.)

I consider myself, and have been told by others that I am, an extraordinarily patient person—except behind the wheel of a car.

I commute 80 miles each way to work (that’s how much I love my job), so I spend a lot of time in the car. That, in turn, means I get annoyed—unreasonably so—by folks who are driving in such a way that forces me to spend a minute longer than I need to in that car. Now, it never leads to dangerous or aggressive driving, but it does lead to a lot of windows-up ranting while I’m on the road. One day, while I was in mid-rant, my 21-year-old daughter finally said, “Mom, you need to imagine other people complexly.”

I think of that conversation often as I listen to the polarizing dialogue that continues across our nation. What if, across the nation, we each imagined other people complexly, not just as their culture, their gender, their political party, their favorite television show? People, with all their joys and sorrows, their best qualities and their deepest flaws—uniquely themselves, yet with so much […]

Guest Author2017-02-02T10:33:44-05:00February 1st, 2017|Nursing, Public health|1 Comment

Nurses Aren’t Just Healers, They’re Teachers Too: A Patient’s View

A teeny red bump had mysteriously appeared on my left index finger. It hurt when I pressed on it. I figured it was nothing. . . .

That’s the start of the June Reflections essay in AJN, “Ms. Lisa and Ms. MRSA,” a patient experience narrative by freelance writer Shannon Harris. As luck would have it, the bump on her finger, it turns out, is not nothing. It’s MRSA.

The diagnosis takes a while. Finally the situation worsens, and surgery is needed. The author takes it all in stride, at least in retrospect:

The third physician stood out to me most. He asked to take a picture of my green and black, staph-infected finger with his iPhone. “Sure. Look at it! I thought this only happened to pirates,” I told him as he snapped away. He glanced at the young, button-nosed nurse standing beside him. “Don’t you want a picture? For your records?” he asked.

She shook her head, squinting and gritting her teeth. “I know. Yuck,” I said. I later shared photos of my infection journey online, to the great wonder and disgust of my friends and family. Before that, though, came surgery.

The author’s tone is light, but the situation is […]

Jacob Molyneux, senior editor/blog editor2016-11-21T13:02:27-05:00June 3rd, 2015|Nursing, patient engagement, patient experience, Patients|1 Comment

Good Jokes, Bad Jokes: The Ethics of Nurses’ Use of Humor

By Douglas P. Olsen, PhD, RN, associate professor, Michigan State University College of Nursing in East Lansing, associate editor of Nursing Ethics, and a contributing editor of AJN, where he regularly writes about ethical issues in nursing.

Humor has real benefits. But when does nurses’ joking about patients, each other, and the care they provide cross a line?

otisarchives4/Flickr

“Nurses make fun of their dying patients. That’s okay.” That was the provocative title of an op-ed by Alexandra Robbins in the Washington Post on April 16. The author’s treatment of the topic was more complex than the title suggested, but some examples of humor given in the article were troubling.

For ethical practice, nurses must consider if it is ever appropriate to discuss the clinical care of patients for humorous purposes. An easy answer would be—never. If patient care is never joked about, then no one’s feelings are ever hurt and nothing inappropriate is said as a joke. However, my experience as a nurse in psychiatric emergency and with human nature suggests two arguments against this approach:

Jokes will be made despite any prohibition.
Considerable good comes from such humor.

If jokes are going to be told anyway, it’s better to provide an ethical framework than to turn a blind eye. If joking about patient care […]

Guest Author2016-11-21T13:02:39-05:00April 29th, 2015|career, Ethics, healthcare social media, Nursing, nursing perspective, Patients|1 Comment

A Little Levity to Ease the Family Caregiver’s Burden

According to the CDC, almost 21% of households in the U.S. are affected by family caregiving responsibilities. The pressures and costs of this unpaid labor of love have been well documented.

This month’s Reflections essay, “Swabbing Tubby,” is written from the family caregiver perspective rather than that of a nurse. It’s about the wife and two adult daughters of an ailing older man as they are coached in one of the skills they will need to care for him at home.

It’s a tough situation, but one in this case leavened by the ability of these three women to laugh a little at the more absurd aspects of their predicament. Here’s the beginning:

In retrospect, I can’t help feeling sorry for the earnest young woman who tried so hard to show my mother, my sister, and myself how to hook up our brand-new, at-home, IV feeding device. She was all of 25, with the freshly scrubbed look of a young schoolgirl. Her youthful perkiness was no match for the trio of exhausted, crabby women who faced her across the empty hospital bed. Dad was down in X-ray having yet another CT scan, and the three of us were awaiting […]

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Jacob Molyneux, senior editor/blog editor2016-11-21T13:03:06-05:00February 2nd, 2015|patient engagement, patient experience, Patients|1 Comment