The Role of Humor in Nursing

Podcast Transcript

Carol Pehotsky:

As nurses there are plenty of times on the job when if we didn't laugh, we'd cry. Humor is important in our profession as a stress reliever, an ice breaker with patients, and a way of bonding with fellow nurses and caregivers. Cait Hogan, who's both a nurse and a standup comedian, joins me today to talk about the role of humor in nursing.

Hi, and welcome to Nurse Essentials, a Cleveland Clinic podcast where we discuss all things nursing, from patient care, to advancing your career, to navigating tough on the job issues. We're so glad you're here. I'm your host, Carol Pehotsky, Associate Chief Nursing Officer of Surgical Services Nursing.

Most of us would like to think we have a good sense of humor, and some of us perhaps more than others. When I'm on, when I'm having a good day, my husband likes to joke that he married me for the laughs. Although, I suppose one could argue that - is he laughing at my acts of clumsiness and buffoonery, or am I actually funny? But we've also, most of us have witnessed where humor fell flat, right? Whether it's on a TV show or you're at a party, so humor can sometimes with a little bit fear, nobody wants to be that person that's met by crickets when they say something that sounded a lot funnier in their head before it came out of their mouth. So, one could argue that, much like nursing, there is both an art and a science to humor.

Viktor Frankl, Holocaust survivor, author, and noted psychiatrist, has been quoted as saying, "Humor, more than anything else in the human makeup, affords an aloofness and ability to rise above any situation, even if only for a few seconds." And when you look at the literature, much has been said and written about the benefits of the use of humor in nursing and in healthcare in general, both among members of the teams and with our patients. I even read an article that said humor training helps schizophrenic patients, uh, experience less in terms of symptoms.

So, there's everything out there from peer reviewed research articles to joke books with cartoon illustrations, to a host of memes of a variety level of, of appropriateness, but I don't think that any of those authors are actual standup comedians. So, it is my great pleasure today to welcome Cait Hogan. Cait is one of our fabulously talented nurses who works at the bedside at the medical ICU of Cleveland Clinic's main campus for the past two and a half years. Prior to that, she was a standup comedian. Cait, thank you so much for taking your time out of your busy schedule to join us today.

Cait Hogan:

Absolutely. I'm very excited to be here.

Carol Pehotsky:

Excellent.

Cait Hogan:

I'm excited to talk about where nursing is because a lot of nursing is communication.

Carol Pehotsky:

Sure.

Cait Hogan:

And that communication meets humor.

Carol Pehotsky:

Absolutely. Thank you. So, if you wouldn't mind, do you mind going through briefly your, your life story that got you between standup comedian, to nurse, to where you're sitting today?

Cait Hogan:

I guess the abridged version to tell it short, which is not a quality I usually carry. When I was about 18, I was dating a guy, and got in an argument. He was a standup comic. He said, "You're not funny." And so, I went to his comedy club, and I did comedy, and I got a better reaction than him, they saw it. Definitely the prototype, but then after that I kinda went through a journey of, well, we didn't last. And then I went through a journey. I, I tried to explore being a nun in Kolkata.

Carol Pehotsky:

Oh my.

Cait Hogan:

Which, you know, not a nun. That's what I learned.

Carol Pehotsky:

Oh.

Cait Hogan:

And now I was in Cleveland.

Carol Pehotsky:

Okay.

Cait Hogan:

In Cleveland for about a month and needed to find a new job. I have just signed a lease. I didn't know anybody in Cleveland.

Carol Pehotsky:

Oh gosh.

Cait Hogan:

So, I did a lot of soul-searching that year, worked at a shoe store, worked at a call center, and then I fell into marketing at a dumpster company.

Carol Pehotsky:

Oh. Now that's a skill, marketing a dumpster.

Cait Hogan:

In interviews, when I'm, I'm interviewing for jobs it's, you know, they bring that up, "Oh, you worked at a dumpster company?" I'm like, you know, dumpster fires logistically are not the worst thing that can happen. I've handled plenty of dumpster fires.

Carol Pehotsky:

Literally.

Cait Hogan:

And then I ended up in nursing. You know, my grandmother was a nurse, my aunt is a nurse. Well, she just retired in New York and, so we have nurses in the family. And it just kind of seemed the best place, because what I like about nursing, and I think it's what kinda like I bring with my, my personality is there's always room for learning. Under the heaviness in the context of life or death, that's the profession and the career, the philosophy is we're going to strive to be better.

Carol Pehotsky:

Yeah.

Cait Hogan:

And it seems like it's very team and goal orientated too.

Carol Pehotsky:

Yes, yes.

Cait Hogan:

Where everybody in the room is striving to be better doing, you know, what can we do next? What have we done before? What has worked and hasn't worked?

Carol Pehotsky:

Right.

Cait Hogan:

And a lot of that has to do with comedy too. What have we done before?

Carol Pehotsky:

Sure. Yeah.

Cait Hogan:

What has worked? And what hasn't worked?

Carol Pehotsky:

Yeah, the same old joke isn't funny, as funny as it was the first time someone told it, sure.

Cait Hogan:

Exactly and so, like humor is really cool 'cause what I found in the middle of doing all that career searching was an outlet.

Carol Pehotsky:

So, you were doing standup all along?

Cait Hogan:

Yes.

Carol Pehotsky:

Excellent.

Cait Hogan:

Because in Cleveland, there's standup every night of the week.

Carol Pehotsky:

Huh.

Cait Hogan:

There's a standup show and open mic. Usually, the people at the bar don't even know it's happening.

Carol Pehotsky:

Well, that's, that's a different episode folks.

Cait Hogan:

Yes. And it's wild, because I've done standup, you know, I've toured internationally.

Carol Pehotsky:

Huh.

Cait Hogan:

And so, doing standup in Western Europe, Eastern Europe, doing standup in Canada, doing standup in, around the United States, Cleveland has a very unique audience where most people who go to a standup show are like, "Oh, I'm coming to laugh."

Carol Pehotsky:

Okay.

Cait Hogan:

Cleveland audiences have this air of, "Make me laugh."

Carol Pehotsky:

Oh, no.

Cait Hogan:

You know, yeah.

Carol Pehotsky:

Oh, oh. Like, like it isn't scary enough.

Cait Hogan:

You got to like win them over which is, I mean, I guess at the end it's an exercise in winning a crowd over. And, and to be fair, a lot of people are sprung on. They had no idea the open mic was happening that night.

Carol Pehotsky:

Sure.

Cait Hogan:

And so it is, it is a little, when you make it a game of winning people over or playing with their reaction. And so, it's fun too, to also play off of those. And I feel like my mother once when I was in school struggling with a nursing class, I was like, "Man, this is the hardest class." So many, like only like two thirds of people pass this semester.

Carol Pehotsky:

Sure. Oh, yeah.

Cait Hogan:

And I was like, "This is really hard." And she's like, "Well, you know." And she meant this so genuinely. She's like, "Well, you always have the comedy to fall back on."

Carol Pehotsky:

She's the only person in the history of history to have said that.

Carol Pehotsky:

Well, but here you are today bringing it all to the patients you serve. I wanna go back to a lot of great things you've already shared, but then, the comment you made about winning a room over.

And when we think about, you know, are listeners are, are hopefully everywhere from people who are in nursing school to people who are somewhere along their nursing career lines, but if we haven't yet, we can certainly imagine walking into a patient's room were either they or the family member are arms crossed over. They've gone through so much just to land in that bed. So, with your experience, what thoughts do you have around read the patient room and how to respond? What are some things that you've brought with you from your career that you use?

Cait Hogan:

I just introduce myself. I try and, like there's this thing where they're like, "Today I'm matching energy." Like whatever, you decided what day we're having.

Carol Pehotsky:

Okay. Interesting.

Cait Hogan:

And I, I don't, I don't do that all the time. I don't do that most of the time. It is well, I try and bring you to my energy, you know what I mean?

Carol Pehotsky:

Sure. Yeah.

Cait Hogan:

I want you to, I'm going to try to give you the support you need to, you know, and it doesn't mean you have to think positively about it, but just to feel relief, to feel safety.

Carol Pehotsky:

We'll flip to humor a little bit. Trying to connect with a patient family, what gives you the signal that, all right, I think, think I can go here in terms of humor and especially for somebody who's saying, "I think I have a decent sense of humor, but I don't want to offend anybody."

Cait Hogan:

The main thing I do is I really just have like a set thing, like I, not to say I treat every patient the same, but it's almost like those standards of care. You come in, in your clinicals, you know, you're supposed to introduce yourself. Wash your hands, provide privacy, you know? Like the little checklist of when you walk into a bed space and ask the patient the identifiers and stuff. So, when I come in, I go, "Hi. I'm Cait. I'm gonna be your nurse for tonight. How are we doing?" Easiest way to like and you know if they go, "Oh, we're fine or we're okay." You know? The biggest thing you can do is rely on those jokes that you know too. You know, like I'll start moving somebody and they have all, you know, like we're trying to like to coordinate all the different things. You know they could have a Swan, they could have, uh, cental lines, they can, they can have all these things.

Carol Pehotsky:

All sort of, yeah.

Cait Hogan:

And I always make the joke, "Well, we got wireless phones, but not wireless people."

Carol Pehotsky:

There you go.

Cait Hogan:

It's very innocuous.

Carol Pehotsky:

Yes, yes. There you go.

Cait Hogan:

It recognizes the frustration, but like and they're all, and especially with like the elders they're like, "Yeah." Like, you know?

Carol Pehotsky:

And it's a great, a litmus test to see if somebody chuckles or if they gave you a stony face, like all right. This is, humor may not be the most therapeutics application here in this room, noted.

Cait Hogan:

Yes.

Carol Pehotsky:

So, you've shared some great information that I think is really helpful for our audience in terms of, of using humor to read a room, to sort of recover when it doesn't go as intended. And really as that stress relief. We know sometimes humor is a defense mechanism.

So when should we be on alert because maybe we're using humor to create a boundary or an emotional distance? And sometimes that can be healthy, but sometimes that can be unhealthy. How, how would we as nurses take a step back and reflect and say, is this helping the situation or not?

Cait Hogan:

It's like, am I keeping in scope the humor is about either my experience or shared experience, because a lot of times I don't think we think of the family seeing this as a shared experience, and it is. We're sharing the experience of their loved one. We all have different roles, but this is a shared experience.

Carol Pehotsky:

Yeah.

Cait Hogan:

And I try and be as honest and as educational as possible, so when I walk into a room, one of the first things I ask is, "Do you know what this machine is?"

Carol Pehotsky:

Sure.

Cait Hogan:

And I kinda make the joke on me where, like I'm like, "You know, one of the biggest things that blew my mind in nursing school was that your pee is not from what you drink. It is your blood." It's not like you drink and it goes to your bladder.

Carol Pehotsky:

Yeah, yeah.

Cait Hogan:

And they're like, "What?" And so, I tell them what the dial- the continuous dialysis and stuff, and I explain what a ventilator, and so, I just kind of go through 'cause a lot of times it's very overwhelming.

Carol Pehotsky:

Sure. And that humor can really take that tension down for that family that's taking all of it in.

Cait Hogan:

And, and it's not humor about their loved one.

Carol Pehotsky:

No, yeah.

Cait Hogan:

It's more about me. Like, "Do you know what blew my mind?"

Carol Pehotsky:

Yeah.

Cait Hogan:

"Let me give you a nursing insider secret."

Carol Pehotsky:

That's right. Let me in. Here we go.

Cait Hogan:

Or even just acknowledging, you know like one, "Oh, yeah, I read the chat. You guys have been, like here, in the hospital for a while. You guys could have a nursing degree." Like you know, like, and not to be condescending about it.

Carol Pehotsky:

Yeah.

Cait Hogan:

So, like I think, I think kind of checking in with yourself. I've written about when self-deprecating humor becomes actually self-marginalizing?

Carol Pehotsky:

Oh, this is my jam. I need to pay attention. All right, let me get my pen out. Go for it.

Cait Hogan:

And so, when we make jokes about ourselves or about other folks it's a phrase like punching down, you know, are you punching down? Or are you punching up? Essentially for humor to happen you have to obstruct something. A pun would obstruct the grammar, you know?

Carol Pehotsky:

Oh, sure. Okay.

Cait Hogan:

So, you, there had, the gag has to be an obstruction, so when we walk into rooms what do we need to obstruct? And I think what we need to obstruct is sadness, like sadness is absolutely appropriate and people who are loved to deserve their loss to be sad, deserve their pain to be to create sadness, but you can't have a life without joy. And so, if they're still here, they're still living, we're still fighting, even if they're, you know, intubated, sedated, paralyzed, pron- you know, like we still have life.

Carol Pehotsky:

It was a temporary obstruction from the sadness that's something we can bring.

Cait Hogan:

Yes. And so that's where it's, it's you have to, you know, find joy. And I think that's in humor we can really bring it to it.

Carol Pehotsky:

Well, and I think it comes down to. I love what you said about bringing joy, because if, if somebody is saying, "I just, I'm not funny. That's not where I'm comfortable." It's okay.

Cait Hogan:

Yeah.

Carol Pehotsky:

You don't have to use humor. It's that what else can you do to bring joy to that patient and that family?

Cait Hogan:

I think a lot of times, like folks think like, uh, you know like, "Oh, I'm not good at jokes. My, I don't have a sense of humor." You've never laughed in your life? You've never found anything funny? That doesn't mean you can create funny but you've never, you do have a sense of humor.

Carol Pehotsky:

Yeah.

Cait Hogan:

Everyone has a sense of humor. Well, I guess I shouldn't say everyone, but well, especially nurses, like I don't think you could be a nurse without having some sort of sense of humor.

Carol Pehotsky:

It may look a little different, but it's still there.

Cait Hoga:

Yes. And so like, I'll, I'll walk into a room, especially if I've had them the night before and I'll go, "Oh, hey, did you miss me?"

Carol Pehotsky:

Right. You're stuck with me again. Yes.

Cait Hogan:

And I, and I say it very like, you know, like "Did you miss me?" Or if they ask for something like a cup with ice, like it's almost like a shtick, like it's like physical comedy. I'll like pull the curtain back a little bit and I'll be like, "All right. I got you I-" Like almost like you're pr- and they're like, huh, okay.

Carol Pehotsky:

Yes, yes. Yeah. It's, it's those little moments of joy that, that we all need that you're able to bring through humor. So, we're gonna switch gears a little bit to wrap it up. We would like to end with what I call the speed round where we let our audience get to know a little bit more about you as a human being and not just as somebody who's, who's been a fabulous expert for us. So, we spend a lot of time on the floor as nurses. What's your go-to pair of shoes?

Cait Hogan:

So, I, this is a funny one. I know it's a speed round. I was the manager of a shoe store where they were. And I, I did not, I did not provide my CV to be fair.

Carol Pehotsky:

No.

Cait Hogan:

I always joked they paid us in shoes, but they, all of our bonuses were in shoes, so I have all these shoes and so, I wear a lot of New Balance because I have all of these yeah. They have fun little, like the fresh foams, like so, I wear, I wear a lot of New Balance 'cause I just have all these shoes and no.

Carol Pehotsky:

Excellent. I love it. It's your time to go home and unwind. What's your go-to? Do you like TV? Do you like podcasts? Do you like books? What, what are you consuming these days for, for your own pleasure?

Cait Hogan:

Well, I like cartoons.

Carol Pehotsky:

Okay.

Cait Hogan:

So, I will go home and watch cartoons. Right now, there are no new cartoons I haven't watched really, and I can always go back and watch Futurama or Bob's Burgers.

Carol Pehotsky:

Oh, okay. All right. I see where you're going.

Cait Hogan:

But I started, unfortunately, Succession because now I'm in it.

Carol Pehotsky:

Oh, okay. Got to binge-watch. All right, well, good luck with that. Let me know how it turns out. All right, well, thank you so much for joining us today.

Cait Hogan:

Absolutely. This was so much fun.

Carol Pehotsky:

As always, thanks so much for joining us for today's discussion. Don't miss out. Subscribe to hear new episodes wherever you get your podcasts. And remember, we want to hear from you. Do you have ideas for future podcasts or want to share your stories? Email us at nurseessentials@ccf.org. To learn more about nursing at Cleveland Clinic, please check us out at clevelandclinic.org/nursing. Until next time, take care of yourselves and take care of each other. The information in this podcast is for educational and entertainment purposes only and does not constitute medical or legal advice. Consult your local state boards of nursing for any specific practice questions.