This past weekend has been so busy and unfortunately pretty stressful. I've been in training for my new job, a scribing position at Cook Children's hospital. Though the training is intense, there have been brief moments of humor that did not involve purely me laughing at random things happening.
Background: I tend to laugh at everything. It is both a blessing and a curse. It is a blessing, because it lets me see the bright side of life and death and everything in between. It is a curse, because sometimes a situation presents itself in which it is hard for me to act completely serious. That is the nature of who I am, though, and I must live with the consequences of seeing the world in rose-colored, perpetually stylish Ray-Bans.
And we are back to this weekend: Essentially, we are watching video after video of scenarios in the emergency department that we will inevitably encounter and have to document. Obviously, professionalism is one of the qualities a scribe must possess, and we are to show this professionalism during our training. I know how to be professional while wearing my rose-colored Ray-Bans, but I was not sure how far I could stretch it this weekend. How intense was this training going to be? Would our trainer have a sense of humor? Would they fail me because I like to laugh? Would I even enjoy this job due to the traumatic nature of the ER and the subsequent lack of humor and infusion of sorrow?
Well, as it turns out, humor is rampant even in medical situations when trauma and death is an occurrence seen in higher proportion than your typical day. Though our trainers were pretty serious, the videos we watched were infused with unexpected humor. For example, the "doctors" in the videos had names like Dr. Timberlake and Dr. McConaughey, which made us chuckle whilst documenting the doctor-patient interactions. There was also one scenario of chronic pain back, in which it is pertinent to ask the patient whether he or she has, sorry for the bathroom humor, "pooped or peed on themselves." We actually phrase this as "bowel/urinary incontinence" to make it sound better. Anyway, both the "patient" and "doctor" in the video laughed at this! This just goes to show that we never truly grow out of that type of humor. We might not find it roll-on-the-ground funny, but we giggle, especially in this particular context.
It surprised me that I would see humor in these intense medical situations. I doubt that actually being in the hospital will prompt as many smiles as the videos did. Regardless, it is nice to see that a sense of humor is not a rare thing in this world. Though these medical scenarios are taken seriously by all parties involved, said parties still seem to find reasons to laugh and be cheerful. This is a perfect example of how humans find humor in sorrow and pain. It is a coping mechanism. And it must work, because we still do it, and I doubt we will stop any time soon. Cheers to humor for saving us, sometimes in just the same way as medicine.
Having been to Cook Children's it is one of the reasons I want to be a pediatric doctor of some sort - there is so much potential for sorrow and terror there, especially when considering that the patients are children. Yet the building is colorful; the doctors and staff are bright, cheerful, and put on a brave face for the kids. It is a truly remarkable place because I feel it (as a whole) tries even harder than a normal hospital to make its patients smile!
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