PART III: LEARNING TO USE HUMOR TO COPE:
A HUMOR SKILLS TRAINING PROGRAM
If you have completed both Humor and Nursing I and the first two parts of this course, you are now well acquainted with the ways in which humor and laughter contribute to good physical and emotional health. They are a powerful ally in helping you provide the quality of care you want to provide - even in the midst of your most stressful days. There are also numerous other work-related benefits to keeping your sense of humor on the job, which have not been discussed here. If you are interested in learning more about humor in the workplace, see www.LaughterRemedy.com.
The key question now is, how do you go about improving your own humor skills in order to get yourself to the point where your sense of humor doesn't abandon you on the kind of high-stress days that only nurses can understand? I have put together a hands-on humor skill development program that is a reflection of the 20 years I spent doing basic research on humor. The core elements of that program are presented here. The full Skills Training is presented in my book, Health, Healing and the Amuse System: Humor as Survival Training. (See www.LaughterRemedy.com for information on how to obtain a copy.)
You will have to read the description of the program to answer test questions on this part of the course. If you want to reap the real benefits of humor in managing your own job stress, boosting the morale of your fellow nurses and patients, and maximizing the quality of care you deliver to patients, you will need to take the initiative to continue following the guidelines offered here even after the formal course work is completed and you've passed the exam. How much you gain from this skill development program will be entirely up to you. To maximize your benefits, and help insure that you stay with the program until you've completed all the steps, find a partner (either someone you live with or work with - ideally a fellow nurse) who will agree to go through the steps with you.
Each step below will first contain a brief description of the step, followed by "Homeplay" for that step. The Homeplay consists of a list of things to do for a period of one or two weeks that will boost the skills associated with that step. The more Homeplay you do, the greater the gains you'll make. This program is not designed for you do to a bit of all the steps at the same time. Spend at least one week (preferably two) on each step and take the steps in sequence.
As noted earlier in this course, it's important to know that it's never too late to improve your humor skills - even if you (or your patients) are approaching retirement age. One recent study showed that going through my "8-Step Humor Skills Program" had a significant positive impact on seniors' ability to cope with the stress in their lives.95
The study used seniors living in different retirement centers. One group spent eight weeks focusing on activities designed to build the humor skills associated with each step provided in the program, while a second group simply got together weekly to watch comedy films from the 1940s and 1950s. So the first group made an active effort to improve their humor skills, while the second group was passively engaged in humor without trying to improve their sense of humor.
While the two groups showed similar coping abilities at the beginning of the study, the group going through the Humor Skills Program scored significantly higher on two different measures of coping at the end of eight weeks. The findings showed that they were not only coping better with the stress in their lives; they were also actively using humor as a coping tool more than they had before the program started.
So you're never too old to learn to use humor to cope with stress. Whether you're 25, 50, or 75 years old, you can learn to lighten up. Remind your patients (and yourself) that a good sense of humor prevents hardening of the attitudes.
Take the Sense of Humor Pre-Test Before Starting the Program
In the Appendix to this course (after the references), you will find a Sense of Humor scale. The Sense of Humor scale reflects the areas of skill development emphasized in the Humor Skills Program. Make two copies of the test, one to be completed before you begin Step 1 and one to be completed after you've finished the program. Once you've taken the Sense of Humor test as a pre-test, do not look at it again until after you've completed the program and taken the test a second time as a post-test. You can then compare the results and see just how much you've gained in going through the skills program.
