Humour: a phenomenological study within the context of clinical education.

Full Abstract

On reflection after a busy day in the ward, undergraduate nursing students concluded that having a clinical teacher who used humour helped them cope with their clinical experiences. This encouraged the author to look deeper into what humour is and describe the lived experiences of nursing students with teachers who used humour. A phenomenological study was undertaken to explore 48 Australian undergraduate nursing students' lived experiences of humour as used by their clinical teachers during clinical education. The data were collected by interviews. Colaizzi's phenomenological methodology was used to analyse the data. The results showed that humour makes it easier for the nursing students to cope with the anxiety-producing situations encountered during their clinical experiences. According to the results, the majority of nursing students preferred to be with a clinical teacher with sense of humour to facilitate/supervise them in the clinical area. However, a word of caution in using humour was revealed in this study because of the personal nature of this phenomenon. Therefore, this study is significant in that it provides a deeper understanding of humour as part of the teaching-learning process within the context of clinical education. The clinical teacher's use of humour during their encounters with the nursing students during clinical education is described and implications for nursing education is discussed.

Author information

Author/s: Lopez Nahas, V (V);

Affiliation: Department of Nursing, Chinese University of Hong Kong, Shatin, New Territories, Hong Kong.

Journal and publication information

Publication Type: Journal Article

Journal: Nurse education today (Nurse Educ Today), published in SCOTLAND. (Language: eng)

Reference: 1998-Nov; vol 18 (issue 8) : pp 663-72

Dates: Created 1999/07/15; Completed 1999/07/15; Revised 2007/11/15;

PMID: 10188472, status: MEDLINE (last retrieval date: 2/18/2009, IMS Date: )

Sourced from the National Library of Medicine. Abstract text and other information may be subject to copyright.

External Links for this article
(including full text providers, if available):

Click Electronic Full-text Provider Links to see options for finding the electronic full text links to this article. Note there may be a subscription or fee required for access to the full text. See our FAQ for information on finding FREE full text articles.

This article may also be located in paper journal collections available in many libraries. Use the Journal and Publication Information above to find the full article.