Doctors who joke about death and health problems in surgey, help themselves, and patients, get through tough times in hospital, research has found.
The study by Medical Humanities and Bioethics at Northwestern University, Illinois found that treating serious and painful subjects in a light, satirical way, improves the doctor’s surgery performance and the patient’s treatment and recovery.
American medical researcher, Professor Kate Watson, explored the use of black humour in medicine and discovered that light-hearted banter allows medics to lower tension and focus on choosing the best treatment for patients.
“To me, the butt of the joke is not the patient. It’s death,” Professor Kate Watson writes in the article, featured in the Hastings Center Report.
“Physicians deserve a more nuanced analysis of intent and impact in discussions of when gallows humour should be discouraged or condemned in the medical workplace.”
However, the research, added that it wasn’t acceptable for doctor’s to joke about the patient’s condition as that would be unethical and that medics found making jokes about body parts was “rarely tolerated”.