Catching up with Karyn

We spend a lot of time in healthcare focused on patient outcomes, and that's how it should be. After all, we all got into this gig to help people cope with illness, injury, or incredibly bad luck. If we're not helping our patients out, we're doing it wrong.

But sometimes the focus on patient outcomes overshadows other important stories. If you're a physician, a nurse, a therapist, an aide, or otherwise involved in the front-line delivery of healthcare, your chances of being injured or becoming ill on the job are more than 4 times higher than if you worked in manufacturing.

Isn't that an incredible statistic? I couldn't believe it when I first heard it. Then I remembered all of the slips, trips, falls, scrapes, and yes, assaults from patients and disgruntled visitors, that I experienced or witnessed during my nursing career, and I thought that number suddenly seemed a little low.

There are twice as many healthcare workers as there are construction workers in this country, but...

Truth is, I don't watch TV much. Mostly it's bad for your health. And honestly most of us don't watch TV as much as we let it drone on in the background until something manages to cut through the clatter.

My stress level begins to climb after just a few minutes of listening to Natalie Morales telling me about the war raging in (name-your-location-here), or Norah O'Donnell telling me about the effects of global warming, or Jean Chatsky telling me I've invested poorly and am going to have to let my favorite child pick out my nursing home. I'll admit it, my chest feels a little tighter, my anxiety is a little higher, and I'm wondering if a glass of Merlot for breakfast would count as a fruit on my Weight Watcher points.

But yesterday something different cut through the clatter. I'm thinking, "Did I hear that right?!"  I stopped what I was doing and looked up. The commercial for Kmart’s gas savings was quick—and by the time I got to where I could see the TV, the ad was...

Some of my favorite people in the world are oncology nurses. If you ever want to meet a group of smart, skilled, and passionate healthcare providers, look to the oncology nurses. They’re there day in and day out on the front lines, providing exceptional care and essential emotional support, to people with cancer. And if you ever want to meet a group of nurses who know the value of a well-timed laugh – oncology nurses can help you with that as well.

Faced with the stark and bleak side of healthcare, oncology nurses have a finely tuned appreciation for the silly and bizarre. To this day, I remember the reaction of the oncology nurse who was treating my college-aged son David when he introduced one of his best buds as Tonto.

“If he’s Tonto,” the nurse asked Adam, “then who are you?”

With a great big grin, my son rubbed his balding head and announced, “I’m his Chemo-sabi!”

Sometimes those laughs come exactly when you need them....

Happy Nurses Week!

If you've ever cleared out an entire Pizza Hut just by talking shop with your co-workers, this week is for you!

If you've ever complimented a stranger on their lovely veins (or merely ogled from afar!) this week is for you!

If you've ever proven your ability C-diff at a distance, using only your nose, this week is for you!

If you've ever defined 'medication error' as "I should have taken the Ativan myself!" this week is for you!

If you've ever had your scrubs seized by the CDC as the most terrifying thing they've ever seen, this week is for you!

Nurses are amazing people, and this is the week we celebrate our profession. Whether you're a nurse in the hospital setting, health clinic, school, nursing home or long term care setting, corrections facility, military, or beyond, the fact is that you're the front lines of health care in this country. You are the number one source of caring, compassionate patient care. The work you do makes a real difference in the lives...

That's where you'll find me -Karyn Buxman, RN, neurohumorist, and author of What's So Funny About... Heart Disease?: A Creative Approach to Coping with Your Condition- sharing the latest research on humor and healing for the person who has heart disease.

Did you know that laughing for half an hour a day can reduce your bad cholesterol by up to 66%? When you have heart disease, cholesterol control is job number one. Enjoying humor doesn't replace conventional treatment or prescription medications - but it's a fun, free, and effective way to make successfully managing your heart disease easier.

Listen to the January Jones interview here! If you like what you hear, don't forget to tell your friends about it on Facebook and Twitter. Sharing laughter is one way we can improve everybody's heart health!

We'd been called in for an emergency bowel obstruction. Our scrub nurse had some bad gas - don't ever trust the cafeteria's tacos! In the  middle of the procedure, the surgeon starts freaking out. "I nicked the bowel! Don't you smell that?"  He ran the bowel over and over before he was finally satisfied that it was intact, and he closed. Afterward, when I talked to the scrub nurse about it, she said, "What was I going to do - tell him I farted?!"

OR Nurses: this bookis for you! I count the years I spent as an OR nurse as some of the finest (and funniest!) of my career. Talk about the tight bond between nurses! I learned true caring, compassion, and grace-under-pressure from my colleagues behind those double doors.

There were also lots of laughs - and thank goodness for that. Laughter provides the emotional resiliency we need to operate at the top of our game in the high-stress, high-pressure OR environment. Nurses who laugh regularly enjoy considerable physical and mental...

I'll admit it - when I first saw this restaurant sign featured in the Huffington Post, I laughed out loud. Chances are you did too!

Now imagine what your reaction would have been if, instead of encountering this sign on the internet, you saw it while you were driving through your neighborhood. It's still funny - and the fact that the restaurant shared a funny sign might just be enough to motivate you to turn in and have a taco (even though they're not free!)

Humor is Power: Building Your Business

Businesses that offer their customers a way to laugh gain a significant competitive advantage. Humor is disruptive. It attracts our attention and makes us change the way we think.  The Mexican restaurant advertising “Free Tacos – Yesterday Only!” will make us laugh, but they’re also planting that seed reminding us how much we like tacos. Couple that with the powerful emotional associations people have with humor, and you’ve got circumstances that...

Build The Humor Habit!

Are you looking for ways to add more humor to your life? You should be! Laughter has tremendous benefits for our physical well-being, emotional resiliency, and social connections. Humor is power! When we laugh, we gain both a broader perspective on the world and a strengthened sense of being in control of our life.

It's a great idea to laugh every single day! Here are four websites that made me laugh out loud this week:

Nurse Quotes & Pics This Pinterest Board collects images and sayings hysterical for nurses and others working on the front lines of patient care

The Onion Satire and parody based on today's headlines

xkcd A smart and funny webcomic - scroll over the comics to see hidden text that can make the gag even funnier.

ebaum's world Short funny videos you'll want to share with your friends.

What are your favorite humor websites?

Humor is perhaps a sense of intellectual perspective: an awareness that some things are really important, others not; and that the two kinds are most oddly jumbled in everyday affairs. Christopher Morley

Whether you're dealing with a chronic health condition like diabetes or heart disease, are a caregiver for someone with those conditions, or are just trying to make it through life with less stress and more fun, humor helps. At times when we feel stressed out or overwhelmed (an exceptional set of circumstances I like to call a Typical Friday Afternoon!) it can be difficult to maintain a realistic set of proportions about what's going on in our lives. All of our problems and challenges become enlarged: all of a sudden, the fact that you've lost your phone charger is as catastrophic an event as you've ever experienced.

Rationally, you know that's not true. Losing a phone charger probably doesn't even rate on your list of the 101 Most Terrible Things That Have Happened. It might not...

It's time to show the world what Diabetes looks like! I'm really excited about the American Diabetes Association's project, A Day in the Life of Diabetes, to demonstrate the increasing impact diabetes has on our families and communities nationwide. Successfully managing diabetes can be a herculean task, making what might seem like an otherwise ordinary life rather extraordinary.

You are invited to share a personal image, on the Association’s Facebook page, representing what “A Day in the Life of Diabetes” means to them. The image can be a picture of themselves, someone they care about, or otherwise represent how the disease impacts their lives.  The image will then make up a larger mosaic image that will embody the message of “A Day in the Life of Diabetes.”