dark medical humor: coping mechanism or callousness?
dark medical humor.
we’ve all cracked a morbid joke or two, but what’s the deal with finding humor in the grim realities of healthcare?
humor as a coping mechanism:
let’s face it—healthcare is a pressure cooker. every shift can feel like a scene out of a horror movie, and sometimes the only way to keep from losing it is to laugh.
dark humor is our emotional defibrillator, shocking us back to life when the weight of our work threatens to crush us. for many healthcare professionals, dark humor is a vital coping mechanism. it helps to alleviate the stress and emotional burden that comes with the vocational call to serve. studies have even shown that humor can be a powerful tool for stress relief and emotional regulation (raecke & proyer, 2022).
picture this: it’s 3am in the ER, and you’ve just coded your third patient of the night, failure to ROSC. during the debrief, a colleague quips,
“well, at least the patient isn’t complaining anymore.”
morbid? absolutely.
effective in cutting through the tension?
unfathomably so.
however, there’s a fine line between humor that helps and humor that harms.
dark humor is like a scalpel—sharp, effective, but potentially dangerous if misused. while it can foster camaraderie among coworkers, it can also be perceived as insensitive or unprofessional if overheard by patients or their families.
modern societal norms:
in an era where mental health awareness is soaring, we need to be cautious about our humor. social media has made it easier than ever for offhand comments to be taken out of context and broadcasted to the world. what flies in the break room might crash and burn on instagram, or x or my comment section.
studies have even cited that the line between acceptable and offensive humor is increasingly scrutinized in the digital age (wilkinson & gilpin, 2018)
no one wants to go viral for the wrong reasons.
further reading:
- Raecke, J., & Proyer, R. T. (2022). Humor as a Multifaceted Resource in Healthcare: An Initial Qualitative Analysis of Perceived Functions and Conditions of Medical Assistants' Use of Humor in their Everyday Work and Education. International journal of applied positive psychology, 7(3), 397–418. https://doi.org/10.1007/s41042-022-00074-2
- Wilkinson, H., & Gilpin, L. (2018). The Impact of Humour on Medical Professionalism: A Systematic Review. Medical Education, 52(10), 1022-1032