Depression, Anxiety and Stress Reduction in Medical Education: Humor as an Intervention

Background: In recent years there has been a growing appreciation of the issues of quality of life and stresses involved in medical training as this may affect their learning and academic performance. Objective of the study was to explore the effectiveness of humor when used as intervention in large group teaching over negative emotions amongst students. Method: The present Interventional, Randomized control trial study was carried out on medical students of 4th Semester of RMCH, Bareilly, which has total 90 students. Using simple random sampling lottery method the whole class was divided in two groups-A and B consisting of 45 students each. Group A as control group and Group B experimental group. In first and last lecture of both groups Dass-21 was used as measuring scale, for depression, anxiety and stress and results were compared to see the effect of humor on these three negative emotions. Result: Comparison of Severe and Extremely severe Stress: In Group A 40.54% in class -1 increased to 47.54% in class- 4, while in group B initial 13.15 % was reduced to 0 % (highly significant). Anxiety: In group A, after Class 1 -57.45% increased to 61.11% after class 4, while in group B, after class 1- 23.68% reduced to 2.27% only (highly significant). Depression: In group A, after Class 1 - 40.53% & 41.66 % after class 4 (not significant), while in group B, after class 1- 18.41% reduced to 0% (highly significant). Conclusion: In present study humor was found to be very effective intervention in relieving students on their negative emotions of depression, anxiety and stress to a larger extent. Further research would justify the use of humor as an effective teaching aid in medical education

Humor styles and psychosocial working conditions in relation to occupational burnout among doctors

Medical professionals are an occupational group at a particularly high risk for job burnout. The aim of the study was to determine relationships between humor styles and psychosocial working conditions on the one hand and occupational burnout in the medical profession on the other. Participants in the study were 82 professionally active doctors, interviewed and examined using questionnaire methods: the Maslach Burnout Inventory, Humor Styles Questionnaire, and the Psychosocial Working Conditions instrument. The results show that occupational burnout is a serious problem among medical doctors, even those with a short work history. Diffcult psychosocial working conditions enhance the occupational burnout symptoms. Moreover, higher severity of burnout symptoms correlates with lower support from superiors and with less frequent utilization of adaptive humor styles: self-enhancing and affliative. Therefore, it is worthwhile to develop programs of burnout prevention for medical professionals, with an emphasis on social skills training, and to enlarge such resources as support at workplace and humor utilization skill

Sense of Humor, Stress, and Burnout in Medical Social Workers

This quantitative study used survey research methodology to explore the relationship befween sense of humor, stress, and burnout in medical social workers. The hypothesis of this study is that a sense of humor will decrease stress, which in turn will descrease burnout for social workers. This study surveyed 75 medical social workers in the State of Minnesota on their use of humor and their current stress and burnout level. The study used the Sense of Humor Rating Scale, the Job Stress Survey, and the Maslach Burnout Inventory as the measures to quantify the variables. The study found that stress is negatively correlated with personal accomplishment and sense of humor is positively correlated with depersonalization. These findings have implications in policy and practice by assisting social service supervisors with identifying sense of humor, stress, and burnout in their employees and creating ways to combat the negative aspects of stress and burnout

Humor and Laughter may Influence Health. I. History and Background

Articles in both the lay and professional literature have extolled the virtues of humor, many giving the impression that the health benefits of humor are well documented by the scientific and medical community. The concept that humor or laughter can be therapeutic goes back to biblical times and this belief has received varying levels of support from the scientific community at different points in its history. Current research indicates that using humor is well accepted by the public and is frequently used as a coping mechanism. However, the scientific evidence of the benefits of using humor on various health related outcomes still leaves many questions unanswered

Suffering in Medical Contexts: Laughter, Humor, and the Medical Carnivalesque

This article argues that a primary context for medical humor is a culture of suffering that permeates the medical profession and suggests that this laughter–suffering connection is part of a broader phenomenon called the medical carnivalesque that is found in medical culture

Seriously Funny: The Clinical Role of Humor in the Grief Process

With the introduction of laughter groups and laughter yoga to such distinguished medical facilities as the Mayo Clinic and Cancer Treatment Centers, the use of humor as a therapeutic tool is beginning to emerge. This study aims to gain an understanding of what motivates therapist’s to use humor while working with grieving clients through a qualitative approach. Four licensed therapists were interviewed on the topics of theoretical orientation, intentional use of humor with grieving clients, the clinical risks and benefits of using humor and the therapist’s personal preferences of humor. The major themes found in this study were the role that humor plays in creating alliances, measuring safety, assessing the client and self care. This study concluded that humor could play a very significant role in the grief process by improving the therapeutic alliance, assessing the client’s recovery and acting as a tool for self‐care on the part of the therapist

Seriously Funny: The Clinical Role of Humor in the Grief Process

With the introduction of laughter groups and laughter yoga to such distinguished medical facilities as the Mayo Clinic and Cancer Treatment Centers, the use of humor as a therapeutic tool is beginning to emerge. This study aims to gain an understanding of what motivates therapist’s to use humor while working with grieving clients through a qualitative approach. Four licensed therapists were interviewed on the topics of theoretical orientation, intentional use of humor with grieving clients, the clinical risks and benefits of using humor and the therapist’s personal preferences of humor. The major themes found in this study were the role that humor plays in creating alliances, measuring safety, assessing the client and self care. This study concluded that humor could play a very significant role in the grief process by improving the therapeutic alliance, assessing the client’s recovery and acting as a tool for self‐care on the part of the therapist

A PRAGMATIC ANALYSIS OF HUMOR USING MEDICAL TERMS IN GREY’S ANATOMY SEASON 2

This research is under the scope of pragmatics which has the aims to (1) find out the medical terms used to create humor in Grey’s Anatomy Season 2 TV series; (2) identify the types of humor using medical terms in Grey’s Anatomy Season 2 TV series; and (3) explain the functions of humor using medical terms in Grey’s Anatomy Season 2 TV series. The researcher applied the descriptive qualitative method. The form of the data used in this study was utterances, and also words, phrases and sentences of the narration which contain humor using medical terms. The contexts of the data were dialogues taken from Grey’s Anatomy Season 2 Episode 1-5. The main instrument of the study was the researcher herself. After being collected, the data were categorized and analyzed based on the medical terms, types of humor, and the functions. To enhance trustworthiness of the data in this study, triangulation was employed. The research reveals three findings. The first is that the medical terms which are employed by the characters to create humor in Grey’s Anatomy Season 2 covering five basic medical terminology. They are disease, medicine, hospital position, anatomy, and medication process. Humor employed by the characters is represented in the forms of jokes and spontaneous conversational humor since unintentional humor does not occur in the data. In spontaneous conversational humor, nine forms are employed by the characters. They are irony, sarcasm, overstatement, self-deprecation, teasing, replies to rhetorical question, clever replies to serious statements, double entendres, and transformations of frozen expressions. Finally, only three out of four functions of humor that are found, i.e. social management, decommitment, and mediation. Keywords: pragmatics, humor, medical terms, Grey’s Anatomy Season

The Use of Humor With Families During Pediatric Trauma Intake Assessments

Traditionally from a positive psychological view, humor is regarded as an adaptive force, a vital aspect of healing, and possibly a beneficial coping tool when faced with traumatic circumstances. Despite these beliefs, little is known about how humor relieves stress with parents in the initial intake assessment when their child has been traumatically injured. The purpose of this phenomenological study was to explore social workers\u27 use of humor during pediatric trauma assessments. A sample of 6 parents were from pediatric parent trauma support groups to participate in this study, which employed a subject-intensive theoretical framework. Face-to-face interviews and participant observation were used to analyze the experience of the parents with the social worker that used some form of humor consisting of jokes, laughter, smiles, and verbal or nonverbal body language during their intake process. All encounters were audio taped and the data were manually transcribed. Theming was used to analyze the data of the study, and 9 themes emerged with a set of subthemes. The findings provided narratives from the parents regarding their initial perceptions of the social worker, forms of humor used, parenting skills, and factors that either support or oppose the social workers\u27 intake assessment using humor. The study also reaffirms the benefits of the use of some form of humor in the pediatric medical field, revealing that humor benefits not only help the children, but parents and clinicians as well. These findings provide an outlook on how social workers make connections with parents at the onset of the hospital experience to create better lines of communication and improve relationships for all parties. The findings have implications for training and raise awareness around social workers use of humor in pediatric trauma assessments