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A descriptive study of the attitude of the hospitalized adult patients towards humor was done in order to examine the concept of humor as an integral part of the promotion of well being and any possibility of using the homour as a nursing strategy for the adult patients in the clinical setting. As health care technology becomes more sophisticated, there is a tendency to rely on monitors and machines to assess the patient’s status. Focus on the functioning and care of machines can result in less meaningful communication with patiens. The professional nurse has the skills and knowledge to deter or reverse such depersonalization through caring about, as well as caring for the patient. As the humor, a unique response is a high touch response indication a personal and caring approach, the humor could be a useful nursing intervention to improve the patient’s psychological well being and reduce the stress of illness. Humour has been studied as a coping strategy in the stressful working environment and as a stress management technique. And some studies on the clinical application has also been done to identify the valuing of humor and the humorous situation and in order to decide whom, when to laugh. However, since the humorous interactions between the nurse and the patient generally have been spontaneous in nature, there is no information available about what humor means to nurses and the patients or how they view its use in the clinical setting. Consequently, published studies on humor have not found in Korea yet. Therefore this study purported to describe the attitudes and perception of the humor as a nursing intervention. The data were collected using Svebak’s Sense of Humor Questionnaire and Questionnaire of attitude toward humour by researchers from 78 patients and 91 nurses in the setting of several medical surgical wards in an university hospital from May 1992 in Seoul, Korea. The research questions for this study were: How is the sense of humour of the nurses and the patients in the hospital? Have the patients experienced using the humour in their hospitalization? What are the patients perception and view it’s use in the Clinical Setting? This Study obtained the following : ① The Nurse’s and patient’s attitude towards humor are positive in clinical setting. This fact indicates awareness of some of the benefits of humor at least on a subjective level. ② Humor was found not to be related to the socioeconomical characteristics of the two study groups. This finding may be due to the limited study sample and the instrumentation not being sensitive enough to measure. Therefore the repeated study should be done to get the reliability and validty of the scales. ③ The most prevalent reason to use a humor was to establish rapport with roommate patient and to relieve their anxiety. The other reasons were to have good relationship with doctors and nurses and to spend the monotous and boring time, to relieve the pain from the sugery and/or diagnostic procedures. Also the subjects wanted to use humor mostly when they need to promote the intimacy among personnels in the hospital. Communication is a basic element found in each of the reasons. ④ The subjects did exhibit humour as a therapeutic means in response to improve the personal interaction in hospital which suggest that homor can help them in a stressful environment. This positive function of humor was indicated a potentially useful nursing strategy is not being fully utilized. Therefore, it seems imperative that the appropriate use of humor be included in the professional education process to insure the professional-in-training learn to use it. ⑤ The subjects need to enjoy humor that should be initiated by nurses purposefully. The identified appropriate time and methods for using humor were the noon time for average 10-20minute in a group session rather than individual session using their favorite TV comedy or jokes. ⑥ Humor sense of the nurses was appreciated moderately by the patients(61.9%) and they met the nurses less frequently(25%) who used to use humour in the work situation. Although the results are descriptive in nature and the effect of humor is not examined yet, this study indicates that humor is an activity for nurses to explore for the hospitalized patients in order to improve the sense of well-being and quality of life. Therefore this study illustrates that further research and education are needed in relation to humor and it’s effectiveness.
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