About the Author
[Portions of this course were adapted from Dr. McGhee's new book, Humor: The Lighter Path to Resilience and Health. AuthorHouse: Bloomington, IN, 2010. (Available at www.Authorhouse.com or bookstores.) The copyright to this material is held by Paul McGhee, and may not be reprinted elsewhere without his written permission. You may print copies of the text of the course for your own use.
Paul McGhee is President of The Laughter Remedy in Wilmington, Delaware. He shows healthcare professionals the health and coping benefits of humor and how keeping your sense of humor in your work provides the resilience needed to provide quality care to patients on the tough days. With a PhD in psychology, he is internationally known for his own research on humor and laughter, having spent 20 years as a researcher while teaching at the university level before becoming a full-time professional speaker.
Paul has provided keynotes on humor and health at hospitals and healthcare conferences across the country. He has given talks on humor in 10 countries, and has published 11 previous books on humor. For additional information on the benefits of humor (and on children's humor), see his website, www.LaughterRemedy.com. If you are interested in a program on humor and health or using humor to cope with stress for your hospital for Nurses Week or another event, send an email to Paul at paulmcghee@verizon.net.
Introduction
The Corexcel course Humor and Nursing I was designed to be taken before this course, although this course can also stand alone. The first course, discusses the current state of our understanding of how humor contributes to physical health and wellness. In this second course, we will first discuss the use of humor in hospital and other healthcare settings. We will then focus on how humor helps you cope with the many stresses associated with working as a nurse and helps you continue to provide quality care and support to patients on high-stress days. Finally, guidelines will be offered for improving your own skills at using humor to cope.
One key component of your sense of humor is your ability to play with language. This course shows you one technique for strengthening your verbal sense of humor by giving you five opportunities at different points throughout the text material to practice generating your own funny punch line to jokes. Two or three jokes will be presented in a box, and a key part of the punch line will be missing. First try to complete the punch line without using the clue that follows. A clue will be provided to get you thinking in the right direction without giving you the answer. You must use the clue to create your own funny punch line. Answers will be provided one or two pages later in the text. To use these examples as a skill-development tool, be sure to take a minute or so to actively search for your own funny answer. If you just look immediately at the answer, you will not boost your verbal humor skills. My book, Small Medium at Large, includes several hundred such examples. It is available at www.LaughterRemedy.com.
