title: The use of humor in promoting positive provider-patient interactions in a hospital rehabilitation unit.
abstract: Humor within the health care setting apparently can serve to facilitate positive patient-provider interactions and to create a patient-centered environment. This article provides an ethnographic account of patient-provider interactions held during therapeutic activity sessions within a hospital unit (MIRTH) designed to promote therapeutic humor. This study's findings suggest that humor in these activity sessions was mainly a by-product of more predominant effects, such as patients' positive attitude and happiness. Whereas MIRTH used contrived humor to portray its identity as a humor unit, staff and patients also took advantage of spontaneous humor that emerged out of interactions. Humor appeared secondary to the primary outcome of promoting patients' happiness and well being.
authors.affiliation: Department of Communication Studies, Texas Tech University, Lubbock, TX 79409, USA. juliann.scholl@ttu.edu
authors.forename: Juliann C
authors.initials: JC
authors.lastname: Scholl
authors.forename: Sandra L
authors.initials: SL
authors.lastname: Ragan
mesh_terms: D000884:Anthropology, Cultural; D006240:Happiness; D006694:Holistic Health; D006757:Hospital Units; D006801:Humans; D009825:Oklahoma; D018802:Patient-Centered Care; D011369:Professional-Patient Relations; D012047:Rehabilitation Centers; D014925:Wit and Humor as Topic / Q000523:psychology*