You can be a competent nurse without a sense of humor, but you probably won't have longevity in nursing, nor will you have as much fun as those with a well-developed funny bone.
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Nurses laugh at some mighty inappropriate things, but sometimes you either have to laugh or you'll cry. Laughing is healthier in the long run, and it's much more fun!
Someone asked me the other day what I thought was the most essential quality to being a good nurse. They then waited with bated breath, hoping for me to say something profound like "You have to have a calling" or "A sincere desire to better the human condition." I know they were hoping for me to say something like that, because they made no bones about their disappointment with my response.
I have never been one of those who subscribe to the idea that a calling is necessary to being a good nurse, and I've posted to that effect. There are many qualities that are essential to being a good and competent nurse, and many more that are nice to have but not totally necessary. (An outgoing personality, for one. That's one I've always WISHED I had, but didn't get when the good and bad traits were being passed out. A naturally willowy figure. Didn't get that one either.)
A Sense of Humor IS a Necessity.
You can be competent without a sense of humor, but you may not be happy or have longevity as a nurse, and you surely won't have as much fun!
When I look back over my long career (temporarily interrupted, but not for much longer!) I realize that the one quality I have which kept me going when many others opted out was a well-developed sense of humor. And maybe not so coincidentally, it's the one thing that has kept me sane and happy in LIFE when many others with my same issues have opted to descend into victimhood and give up.
Sadly, a sense of humor isn't a quality that EVERYONE has. My sister, for example, totally lacks a sense of humor. It hasn't stopped her from climbing to the top of the management pyramid, but it has handicapped her in dealing with life. If you don't have one, it's worth trying to develop it!
Often times in nursing, we encounter situations in which there are only two possible responses: laugh or cry. I've chosen to laugh because it's healthier in the long run, and it's so much more fun. When my patient climbed over the side rails, pulling out his central line and then slipping in the blood, falling and lying on the floor screaming for his "Mama" (at age 92) until I got there, my first impulse was to cry. But once I got things under control, the laughter took hold. The patient who went down the stairs backwards in his wheelchair thanks to some clever Harvard Medical Student who opened the emergency doors for him . . . it was a tragedy that he broke his back. And I have shed more than one tear over that . . . but when all was said and done and enough time had passed, it became a really funny story. The worst job interview of my life (and the catalyst that ended my then-marriage) became another funny story, and I can laugh about it now without even being tempted to cry. If I hadn't jettisoned that loser, I wouldn't be married to the wonderful man I'm with now.
I think some threads on all nurses encourage us to heal by making it possible for us to laugh at some of the worst experiences of our careers, and maybe of our lives. Once you can see the humor in your own breast cancer, your mother's Alzheimer's, your patient's calamity, these events no longer have as much power to cause us pain. That's why I told the student who had shared the funny story at her own expense on one of our humor threads that she HAD learned her lesson even if she did make the same mistake again. Screw up, see the humor in it, and then come here and post about it so we can all laugh. That is the lesson.
