Balancing chameleons: Students experience of humor use within the clinical setting

18^th International Conference on Nursing & Healthcare

December 05-07, 2016 Dallas, USA

Deborah Flynn

University of Bedfordshire, UK

Posters & Accepted Abstracts: J Nurs Care

Abstract :

Humor within health care is associated with positive outcomes for both patients and staff, either as a coping mechanism or as a communication strategy to soothe over awkward moments or enhance patient interactions. Current humor research focuses predominantly on registered staff or healthy psychology students in a laboratory; therefore the focus within this research study is preregistration nursing students. Using interpretative phenomenological analysis, 10 pre-registration nursing students were interviewed regarding how they negotiated the use of humor within the clinical setting. One superordinate theme, balancing chameleons, depicts how the students experience tension within themselves when their pre-capacity for humor is challenged by their mentors� notion of professional conduct followed by their socialization journey to determine how to recognize the line which should not be crossed when using humor even when their role models do. Students felt that they needed to adopt a persona reflecting their mentor�s use of humor especially when the mentor did not engage in its usage. Finally, how the learning relationship through the use of humor can either enhance the student�s learning or make them feel vulnerable was studied.

Biography :

Email: Deborah.Flynn@beds.ac.uk