What happened to The Journal of Nursing Jocularity?

Thanks for asking. I was Vice-President of the JNJ during its eight year stint and best friends with publisher, Doug Fletcher. Doug had a great vision when he created the JNJ and left a tremendous legacy. His untimely death, and the deaths of our friends and colleagues Bob Diskin (Too Live Nurse), Georgia Moss, and Diane Rumsey, left a huge void in the world of healthcare humor. In Doug’s honor, AATH has named its Lifetime Achievement Award after Doug (see www.aath.org)

Below is an announcement I created when we ceased publication of the JNJ. Barely a day goes by that I don’t think of Doug and smile.

The Journal of Nursing Jocularity was a quarterly publication for nurses and health professionals that was written, edited, illustrated and published by nurses and health professionals. The first issue was Spring, 1991; the last issue was the Spring, 1998. Filled with satire, true stories, cartoons, and all around funny stuff related to nursing and health care – it established its place in nursing history as the only humor magazine for nurses.
With the death of Doug Fletcher, Diane Rumsey, Georgia Moss, Bob Diskin, and Debra Woodbury on May 1, 1998 the Journal of Nursing Jocularity ultimately ceased publication.
Below is the news report from the Albany Times:

Tragic Accident Results in End of an Era

ELIZABETH BENJAMIN, MARK McGUIRE, and JOE PICCHI Staff writer

A fiery head-on collision between a tractor-trailer and a sport-utility vehicle left five people dead and three injured Friday morning on Route 20.  The dead were registered nurses scheduled to perform in a comedy show Friday night at the Theater Barn in New Lebanon. The show — “Who’s Got the Keys?” — was supposed to run three nights. A representative of the theater said Friday afternoon that the show had been canceled.All the victims, three women and two men, were in a 1994 Ford Explorer. One woman was thrown from the vehicle onto the road. The others remained in the Explorer, which caught fire after the tractor-trailer rolled over it, police said. A third car, a 1987 Chevrolet sedan, also was involved in the 10:24 a.m. accident.  The Explorer was registered to one of the victims, a Columbia County resident. The others were from Florida, Michigan, Pennsylvania and Arizona, State Police Capt. John Byrne said.The names of the dead were being withheld pending notification of their families, Byrne said. They were pronounced dead at the scene by Columbia County Coroner Angelo Nero.State Police Sgt. G.E. McGreevy said the Explorer pulled out of Jefferson Hill Road onto Route 20 and into the path of an eastbound tractor-trailer laden with about 1,300 used tires. The vehicles collided head-on.  The crash also involved a third vehicle that was heading west on Route 20 toward Nassau, which police surmise might have collided with the tractor-trailer before it rammed into the Explorer.  The condition of the wreckage and the death toll made it difficult for State Police to immediately determine the accident’s cause, Byrne said.

Three people were pulled alive from the crash scene and taken to Albany Medical Center Hospital, one of them by helicopter. The accident closed Route 20, a two- to four-lane road that twists through Rensselaer County en route to Massachusetts.

Truck driver Byron Chacon, 30, of West Haven, Conn., is in fair condition, authorities said. He underwent surgery for injuries to his right arm and suffered multiple abrasions, according to hospital officials.  His co-worker, Jose Ardon, 38, also of West Haven, was in fair condition with a head injury, facial cuts and burns to his hands, officials said. He was taken to the hospital by helicopter.  Donna Brightman, 36, 921 Saratoga Ave., Ballston Spa, the driver of the third vehicle, was released from the hospital after being treated for a head cut and a knee injury.

Police said the tractor-trailer began its trip from the West Haven offices of Inter-East Tires, which collects used tires and brings them back to Connecticut. The truck had made several stops in Albany and Troy, and was en route to Pittsfield when the accident occurred. “I feel terrible,” said Inter-East Vice President Steve Briley. “This fellow (Chacon) has been an excellent employee. We’ve never had a problem.”

Brightman’s westbound sedan, which was damaged on the driver’s side, careered off the road into the woods about 100 yards from Jefferson Hill Road. Broken glass and parts of her car were strewn along the road, uphill from the crash site.

Byrne said it was too early to determine what happened, but police have developed a working theory: that the tractor-trailer was heading down a moderately steep hill on Route 20 while the Chevrolet was headed uphill toward the village of Nassau. The Ford Explorer was on Jefferson Hill Road, which is about in the middle of the hill. Police think the blue car might have hit the tractor-trailer first, causing the truck to plow into the Explorer as it pulled out of Jefferson Hill Road heading toward Nassau.

The Ford Explorer was reduced to a twisted, blackened hunk of metal. The vehicle appeared to be squashed, as though the tractor-trailer had driven directly over it — which Byrne called “one possible scenario.”

The impact of the trailer hitting the Explorer was so great that the vehicle’s license plate was found deep in the woods. The Explorer caught fire and was fully engulfed when the members of seven volunteer fire departments arrived.

The tractor-trailer plowed over the north side guardrail on Route 20 and flipped, scattering the used tires onto the road and into the woods. The trailer stretched halfway across Route 20, blocking the road.  Two hours after the accident, fire and police were still extracting the dead from the Explorer.  “You get pretty messed up when you see people burning and can’t do anything about it,” said Tsatsawassa Fire Chief Jay Kreutziger, who arrived at the scene moments after the crash and saw the Explorer engulfed in flames.

Kreutziger said a nearby resident, who was unidentified and could not be found, hurried to the road with a fire extinguisher in an unsuccessful effort to douse the flames.  Both truckers were able to get out of the vehicle on their own despite the fact that the truck’s cab was upside-down.  Traffic was diverted to side roads off Route 20, which remained closed as of 11 p.m. Friday but was expected to reopen by midnight.

At a news conference Friday night at Troop G headquarters in Loudonville, Byrne said he confirmed that several of the victims were nurses who were supposed to perform the night of the accident in a production called “Who’s Got the Keys?”  The show was part of a Nurses Week celebration, following a demonstration at the state Capitol by a grass-roots nurses organization called the Florence Project that publicizes problems related to health care.

Bright yellow fliers advertising the show were strewn about the accident scene at the intersection of Jefferson Hill Road and Route 20.  The fliers described “Who’s Got the Keys?” as a musical comedy put on by a cast of 20 singing and dancing health care professionals. The show was to be about an exhausted nurse who “discovers the real meaning of being a nurse” by battling an evil, four-headed HMO monster with help from a wacky cast of characters.

Katherine Smeland Pebler, the New York state coordinator of the Florence Project, said the five nurses who died in Friday’s accident had just rehearsed “Who’s Got the Keys?” at the Theater Barn and were heading to Albany to attend the rally at the Capitol steps.  A nurse who had been at the rehearsal but declined to join the group heading to the rally and instead went home to her 4-year-old son assisted the police in identifying the victims, Smeland Pebler said.

“Our profession has experienced a great loss,” said Smeland Pebler, reached by phone at her home Friday night. ”The fact that these RNs, who have been working so hard on this play to bring to light the demise of health care in our nation, died, is tragic. Further, it disturbs us with the Florence Project that they were on their way to our rally.” Oster
contributed to this report.

First published on Saturday, May 2, 1998
Copyright 1998, Capital Newspapers Division of The Hearst Corporation, Albany, N.Y.

Mind if I Laugh? Humor When Tragedy Strikes

Following the events of September 11, 2001 and the terrorism that ensued, I’ve continued traveling around the country, addressing groups about the healing power of humor and laughter.  I heard a variety of comments:“I really want to laugh, but I just can’t bring myself to do it.”“I can’t bear to watch another news report—it’s sucking the life right out of me.”“I feel like laughing, but I’m afraid other people will think I’m being inappropriate.

Is it really okay to laugh yet?” Abraham Lincoln may have said it best: “With the fearful strain that is on me night and day, if I did not laugh I should die.”

Now more than ever, we, as individuals and as a country, need the healing power of humor and laughter to deal with the tragedies we experience.  Accompanying the levels of higher anxiety and stress are people suffering from a myriad of stress related illnesses and conditions: Headaches, stomachaches, general malaise, fatigue, difficulty sleeping, muscle aches, difficulty concentrating, depression, and the list goes on.

Humor relieves anxiety and tension, serves as outlet for hostility and anger, and provides a healthy escape from reality.  It lightens heaviness related to critical illness, trauma, disfigurement, and death.  It comes as no surprise that many people are utilizing humor to deal with the trying times.  But is the humor timely?  Is it appropriate?

“When tragedy and death cloud our lives, they darken our humor as well.”  (Karyn Buxman, This Won’t Hurt A Bit)

The truth is that we all experience tragedy on a variety of levels.  For some of us, it may be on a personal level.  At times, it may be on a community level.  And periodically we experience tragedy on a national or even global level. None of us will escape experiencing personal tragedy: Illness, accident, loss of job, divorce, or death in the family.  These painful ordeals can sometimes evoke humor that allows us to ventilate our frustrations about such unfair events in life.

Communities experience tragedies such as floods, earthquakes, fire, natural disasters, man made disasters (the coal mining tragedy in Utah), loss of industry or politicians caught in compromising situations.

Unfortunately we will witness events that have national ramifications, such as the Shuttle Challenger explosion, and even global ramifications, such as the loss of the World Trade Center in New York. With the technological advances in mass media, events that might once have been a local tragedies now impact people near and far:  At times, the humor demonstrated after the larger catastrophic  events was a ‘hoping humor’, a “let’s hang in there together and we’ll get through this together” kind of humor.  The focus of the humor was more situational and unrelated to the tragedy; the humor was used as a relief mechanism from feelings of sadness and feeling overwhelmed.  One survivor of the Oklahoma City Bombing commented, “I laugh because I’m cried out.”

The challenge: What is stress relieving for some is stress producing for others.  While some find gallows humor to be a positive means of dealing with their stress, others find these expressions of humor to be salt rubbed into an already irritated wound.  What’s appropriate? What’s not?  There is no clear-cut answer.  Gallows humor can be a positive means of coping with anxiety, but it helps if certain guidelines are followed:

Establish a bond: Gallows humor is less offensive when there is a bond between the initiator and receiver of the humor.  Often this is a type of ‘inside humor’ that is utilized within certain the boundaries of a certain group of people. There is an almost unspoken agreement: “I’ll not be offended by your sick humor if you agree not to be offended by mine.”

Be aware of the environment: The trick is to keep the humor within the confines of said group.  Once the dark humor escapes the confines of the group, it then may become hurtful.  Anyone who hears, sees or experiences the humor is part of the audience, whether you intended them to be or not.  Think twice before hitting the ‘forward’ key on an e-mail or blurting out a joke you just heard.  Will it be hurtful if unintended audience members intercept?

Be sensitive to the timing:  H. G. Wells once said, “The crisis of today is the joke of tomorrow.”  Generally it takes time for people to see any humor derived from pain or discomfort.  Some people never will.

Every person’s situation is unique and determined by their own set of circumstances and life experiences. Despite its multiple benefits, humor is always risky business. Try as you may to be politically correct, there will almost always be someone waiting in the wings to be offended.  The humor or laughter provides an excuse for him to ventilate about an unspoken and deeper issue.  That being said, if you choose to use humor to cope with difficult times and are mindful of the feelings of others then, more than likely, most folks won’t mind if you laugh.  Indeed, they may welcome the respite.

When Humor is Part of The Corporate Culture

I had the chance to sit around the table with the most fun bunch of people recently. They weren’t humorists or comediennes—but they were funny as all get out—kind of like Seinfeld meets healthcare. And they love their work.

Moe Green, founder of Classic Care Pharmacy started his business 10 years ago with a handful of people. Today he has over 120 employees and services 125 long term care facilities. The corporate culture is fun, and his staff and his customers are raving fans.

While having lunch with two of the team (Judy and Girish) they told me they hate to miss even a day of work. “There’s something going on everyday, and most of the time it’s fun!” they said. Apparently the rest of the staff agrees with them. The camaraderie and team spirit is palpable when you walk in the office.

As far as retention goes, people who come on board tend to stay on board. “We don’t brag too loudly to others about how good we have it here,” teased a couple of gals following my after-dinner entertainment. “We don’t want a bunch of other people vying for our jobs!”

From chatting with Moe, two keys to Classic Care’s success became obvious. First, he’s a firm believer in empowering his people. “When issues come up, I let them make decisions. There’s rarely an issue that is life or death.” Engaging his employees in company matters helps them to feel ownership. Once a month he holds a “State of The Union” address where he collects all 125 people and gives them updates on what’s going on and gets their feedback. And all of the executive team have an open door policy.

Second, fun is part of the corporate culture and it begins with the interview process. Moe is looking to hire for attitude and if the interviewee isn’t comfortable with the joking and teasing that goes on with the interview committee, then it’s made clear that this is part of the culture. If he or she feels uncomfortable, then perhaps they would be better off working elsewhere—the company isn’t going to change its culture just because someone doesn’t want to play along. Throughout the year, employees spend time together at potlucks, bar-b-ques, sports and just hanging out. They are an extended family.

The weekly executive meetings usually include gales of laughter. “Sometimes staff will come over and close our door because we’re laughing so loud,” Moe admitted.

What’s the result of all this? It comes as no surprise that Classic Care Pharmacy Ottawa was just named one of The Top 10 Employers in the National Capital Region (based on engagement, leadership and over-all employee satisfaction). This award was not just for healthcare but for businesses across the province. And Classic Care continues to grow at an astounding rate: 30% in the last 10 months!

When humor is part of the corporate culture, businesses can enjoy tremendous financial success—but that’s not all. George Burns once said, “Do something you love and you’ll never have to work a day in your life.” It seems that Classic Care employees will never have to “work” again—and with clients as fun as Classic Care, neither will I!

Improv Your Customer Service

My youngest son, Adam, is a student at Second City, the school of improve in Chicago, the springboard for so many of the Saturday Night Live cast. Finally people who can appreciate what his high school teachers could not—his comedic genius! (How many trips to the principal’s office for entertaining his classmates?)

Recently I asked him how he was applying his lessons at Second City to other areas of his life (hoping that my tuition dollars were getting the most bang for the yuck, so to speak). I was pleasantly taken aback by the wisdom he has acquired. He works evenings waiting tables (as many starving artists do) at a local restaurant/jazz club: Andy’s Jazz Club. (For those of you living or visiting Chicago, definitely check this place out—great food and great music [and amazing waiters—at least on certain nights…]).

He explained that the two most important rules of Improv are 1) Never say no. Whatever the situation, say yes—take whatever situation you’re given (especially the unexpected) and go from there—run with it.

2) Make the rest of the ensemble look good. It’s not about yourself—it’s about the others on your team.

So… how does that apply to waiting tables??? Adam explained to me that every seat, every patron is a “scene” and whatever request is made, the answer is always yes. (Oh, that all the waiters and waitresses in my past could have said “yes,” rather than—“we can’t substitute,” “it’s not our policy,” “you’re not my table” and other statements sure to ruin one’s appetite!)

Secondly, being a very funny guy, his tendency in the past was to entertain those at his tables—not a bad thing.  But what he’s realized is that there’s always at least one person in every group that enjoys being funny, too. Thus rule #2: Make the other person look good. Adam loves being funny, but now his goal is to make someone at his table appear funnier than him. “When I’m funny, I get good tips. But when I make the other guy look even funnier, I get great tips.”

Wow! The answer to almost all customer service challenges wrapped up in the first two rules of Improv!

Say yes to the customer’s request and run with it—make it work using creativity, imagination, humor and whatever it takes.

It’s about the other people, not us. Making our customers, patients, coworkers, bosses, spouses, family members, friends, classmates—whomever!—look good.  As my mom always said, “what goes around comes around.”

Way to go, Adam. Go to the head of the class.

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