THERAPEUTIC HUMOR AS A PROCESS OF CARING WITHIN THE NURSE-CLIENT RELATIONSHIP: PERSPECTIVES OF THREE PROFESSIONAL NURSES AND CLIENTS IN AN ACUTE CARE HOSPITAL SETTING.
Contributors: New York University.
Published: 1995
Number of pages: 240
Subjects: Health Sciences, Nursing.; Health Sciences, Recreation.; Psychology, Social.
Description: Humor and its usefulness in nursing practice has been discussed and debated by writers in recent years. Humor is thought to be useful for accomplishing the goal of the professional nurse-client relationship which is to promote or maintain the client's health and well-being through therapeutic use of self. Determining the utility of humor in nursing practice, however, is difficult due to the sparsity of research on humor within the nurse-client relationship and lack of studies in which nurses and clients are studied in context.

This naturalistic study focused on humor in the nurse-client relationship between three professional nurses and three of their clients on acute medical surgical units within real life nurse-client relationships. The purpose was to explore humor within the context of the professional nurse-client relationship from the dual perspectives of the nurse and client in order to gain an understanding of how humor was manifested, and its meaning and significance for the participants.

Symbolic interactionism was the theoretical framework. Field data and participants' reports were analyzed using the grounded theory method of constant comparative analysis. A core process, identified in this study as therapeutic play, helps nurses and clients resolve the paradox stemming from the juxtaposition of humor with life and death. Therapeutic play is the process whereby nurses and clients integrate humor while evolving the specific relationship.

Therapeutic play involves the redefinition of humor as an object of caring for oneself or another to facilitate health and well-being and therapeutic alliance in illness. The main categories of therapeutic play include: Humor, Health-Illness, Nursing Beliefs; Relaxation; Trust; Mother Theresa; Emotional Support; Seriousness; Balance; Seeing a Vision; Promoting the Comic; Novelty; Amusement; Entertaining; Make-Believe; Ad-libbing and Orchestrating; and Transcendence.

In this study, therapeutic humorous interaction drew participants closer while expanding relational boundaries and enhancing client and nurse well-being. The implications for practice, education, and research were presented.
Notes: Source: Dissertation Abstracts International, Volume: 56-04, Section: B, page: 1935.

Thesis (PH.D.)--NEW YORK UNIVERSITY, 1995.

School code: 0146.