| The creation of humor is a part of the interpersonal communicative event. Gaining a sense of the humorous during health care exchanges provides a unique perspective on the communicative interactions that occur between caregiver and patient or, in this research, the nurse and the resident. I argue that the foundation of effective health care resides in the interpersonal relationship between the nurse and the resident. The objective of this study is to understand how participants use humor exchanges and what the participants accomplish with the humor use during the health care transactions.;To better understand the nature of the humor exchanges and their role in this nursing home culture, I conducted an ethnographic study using participant-observation and informal interviews as the main methods of data collection. These methods allowed for the study of face-to-face, conversational humor as the participants created humor exchanges during daily health care exchanges situated in their naturally occurring environment.;Through the components of the applied, ten component schematic, this research reveals that humor exchanges are a crucial part of instrumental and relational communication in this nursing home and that there are various structural consistencies in the participants' use of conversational humor. The participants accomplished major task and relational functions with their creation of humor exchanges including: compliance gaining, distracting, anxiety defusing, aligning, relationship building, face saving, and recognizing participants' humanism and viability. The descriptive results of this study provide an understanding of the participants' experiences and shed light on humor use by describing how participants construct humor exchanges, the role of humor exchanges in interpersonal communication, and the impact on long term care relationships between nurses and residents. |
