Importance of the Concept
Contemporary medical care does not limit the positive effect of cure to mere medical treatment. The humor used is a very important condition for the patients and terminally ill patients especially. It is proved that people who have an opportunity to voice their fears and feel comfortable with them are ready to accept their destiny. This is achieved through a comfortable humor environment.
Theoretical Definition
“One of the four fluids of the body, blood, phlegm, choler, and black bile. Ancient, as well as medieval physiology, claimed that those four components meant a person’s general health if in relative proportions” (Venes 1564). It is the definition of humor by a medical dictionary that directly correlates with the topic under consideration – nurses should use humor to make patients’ routines happier.
Operational Definition
The operational definition is as follows: it is possible to measure the way a person copes with the illness with the help of humor used by the nurses. The Coping Humor Scale (CHS) is a means and a tool to measure humor usage. It is a self-report scale. Moreover, the scale is used to determine the link between humor and health (mental and physical).
NANDA Nursing Diagnostic
Humor would fit into North American Nursing Diagnosis Association (NANDA). Their diagnostic categories are variable and the association has recently become the international one which highlights the importance of humor usage since this can be a non-verbal communication that fits humor in a row around the world. There are two separate terms – a medical diagnosis and a nursing diagnosis. So, the humor will fit into every aspect of nursing diagnosis treatment.
Empirical References
Empirical references play a great role in this process. Once the nurses use their own life experience to cheer up the ill patients and comfort them, patients do feel better and recover sooner. Staying at the hospital is a stress, so the nurses make patients feel somewhat at home with the help of humor usage and empirical references.
The Degree of Generality
Nursing is a very serious component within a cure process of a person, while the doctors’ diagnoses are more crucial for the overall process. Therefore, the degree of generality is allowed at the nursing level of cure. The limit is the way of communication with terminally ill patients; however, it is still applicable (Joel 56).
Level of Abstractness
The use of humor in nursing alternative therapy is still being researched and developed. Since humor reduces stress and fear, it is highly recommended to all of the nurses apply it to their treatment plan. (Pre 56)
The Use of Humor Elsewhere
Remarkably, humor can be used in almost all spheres of humans’ lives including social work in health. Humor fits best there since people volunteering are striving to bring well-being and comfort to other people’s lives, where humor is just what both sides benefit from. (Berkman 898)
Hypotheses
Humor makes a patient recover sooner than others being treated without humor but under other same conditions. Terminally ill patients do feel better with the humor following daily because they are more likely to express their fears; this is good from a psychological perspective and, hence, influences the overall immune system. (Barker 432)
Works Cited
Barker, Anne M. Advanced Practice Nursing: Essential Knowledge for the Profession. London: Jones & Bartlett Publishers, 2008.
Berkman, Barbara. Handbook of Social Work in Health and Aging. New York: Oxford University Press, 2006.
Joel. Advanced Practice Nursing: Essentials for Role Development. New York: F.A. Davis Company, 2009.
Pre, Athena. Humor and the Healing Arts: A Multimethod Analysis of Humor Use in Health Care. Mahwah: Routledge, 1997.
Venes, Donald. Taber’s Cyclopedic Medical Dictionary. New York: F.A. Davis Company, 2009.