Writer, photographer, and advanced practice nurse Hob Osterlund will present “Humor in Nursing: How to Find Time to Laugh When There’s Zero Time for Lunch” on Tuesday, February 7, at 7:15 p.m., in the Bauccio Commons. Osterlund’s talk is sponsored by the Garaventa Center, the School of Nursing, and the Beckman Humor Project and is free and open to all.
Osterlund founded Hawaii’s first inpatient pain and palliative care program at The Queen’s Medical Center in Honolulu. She also principal investigator for the Comedy in Chemotherapy (COMIC) Study, where she and her colleagues were the first to conduct a randomized controlled trial demonstrating the positive impact of comedy on the symptoms of cancer and chemotherapy. She will discuss the nursing profession as “one of the highest and hardest trapeze acts youʻll ever see,” where nurses face impossible situations on a daily basis: trying to balance on a high wire between cost-cutting and enormously expensive interventions, between doctorsʻ orders and the reality of patient care, between compassion for others and boundaries with them, between keeping people alive and allowing them to die, and many more.
For more information contact the Garaventa Center at x7702 or garaventa@up.edu.