Q:
What's the difference between
a nurse and a nun?
A: A
nun only serves one God.
The joke may not have the currency of the latest from
Jay Leno, but it illustrates two basics of medical
humor: physicians are funny people, and nurses have
a funny job. While there are exceptions to these rules,
they're as close as you can get to generalizations
about medical jokes. Jokes about MDs deal with their
personality quirks, jokes about RNs deal with the difficulties
of their jobs. Pharmacy jokes usually just deal with
drug names, and it seems that other health-related
professions just aren't funny.
Because physicians are a stand-in for healthcare in
general, MD jokes cover the entire range of funny patients
with funny complaints. For example:
A blonde visits her doctor and tells him, "I hurt
everywhere." The doctor asks her to show him. The
blonde touches her arm, "Ouch, that really hurts!"
She then touches her cheek, "Ouch, that really hurts!"
She touches her leg, "Ouch, that really hurts, too!
See what I mean Doc?" The doctor says, "Let me try."
He then touches the blonde's arm. She says, "Hmm,
that didn't hurt." He then touches her leg. She says,
"Hmm, that didn't hurt either." The doctor looks
at her and says, "I think I understand: Your finger
is broken."
This is a blond joke that takes place in a medical
office.
Similarly:
Five surgeons are discussing who makes the best
patients to operate on. The first surgeon says, "I
like to see accountants on my operating table, because
when you open them up, everything inside is numbered."
The second responds, "Yeah, but you should try electricians!
Everything inside them is color coded."
The third surgeon says, "No, I really think librarians
are the best; everything inside them is in alphabetical
order."
The fourth surgeon chimes in: "You know, I like
construction workers … those guys always understand
when you have a few parts left over at the end, and
when the job takes longer than you said it would."
But the fifth surgeon shut them all up when he observed:
"You're all wrong. Politicians are the easiest to
operate on. There's no guts, no heart, and no spine,
and the head and butt are interchangeable."
Really, the joke is about accountants, electricians,
librarians, and politicians – the surgeons are
just part of the background.
Real physician jokes are relatively rare, and are
more along time lines of …
"Doctor, are you sure I'm suffering from pneumonia?
I heard once about a doctor treating someone with
pneumonia and finally he died of typhus."
"Don't worry, it won't happen to me. If I treat
someone with pneumonia, he will die of pneumonia."
Or the Henny Youngman classic: "I've got a great doctor.
If you can't afford the operation, he touches up your
X-rays."
In the same vein, we find:
Doctor: The tests show that your
cancer is advanced. You have six months to live.
Patient: But, doc, I can't pay
off my medical bills in six months.
Doctor: In that case, you have
six months more.
* * * * *
The seven-year old girl told her mom, "A boy in
my class asked me to play doctor."
"Oh, dear," the mother nervously sighed. "What happened,
honey?"
"Nothing, he made me wait 45 minutes and then double-billed
the insurance company."
* * * * *
A woman, calling Mount Sinai Hospital, said, "Hello,
I want to know if a patient is getting better."
The voice on the other end of the line said, "Do
you know the patient's name and room number?"
She said, "Yes, darling! She's Sarah Finkel, in
Room 302."
He said, "Oh, yes. Mrs. Finkel is doing very well.
In fact, she's had two full meals, her blood pressure
is fine, she's going to be taken off the heart monitor
in a couple of hours and if she continues this improvement,
Dr. Cohen is going to send her home Tuesday."
The woman said, "Thank God! That's wonderful! Oh!
That's fantastic! That's wonderful news!"
The man on the phone said, "From your enthusiasm,
I take it you must be a close family member or a
very close friend!"
She said, "I'm Sarah Finkel in 302! Cohen, my doctor,
doesn't tell me a word!"
And:
Q:
What's the difference between
a general practitioner and a specialist?
A: One
treats what you have, the other thinks you have what
he treats.
Q:
What's the difference between
a surgeon and a puppy?
A: If
you put a puppy in a room by itself for an hour, it'll
probably stop whining.
Nurse jokes follow along the same lines – many
of them aren't about nurses at all. In fact the next
joke has been recast several times, using nurses, physicians,
and insurance executives:
Three nurses went to heaven, and were awaiting their
turn with St. Peter to plead their case to enter
the pearly gates.
The first nurse said, "I worked in an emergency
room. We tried our best to help patients, even though
occasionally we did lose one. I think I deserve to
go to heaven." St. Peter looks at her file and admits
her to heaven.
The second nurse says, "I worked in an operating
room. It's a very high stress environment and we
do our best. Sometimes the patients are too sick
and we lose them, but overall we try very hard."
St. Peter looks at her file and admits her to heaven.
The third nurse says, "I was a case manager for
an HMO."
St. Peter looks at her file. He pulls out a calculator
and starts punching away at it furiously, constantly
going back to the nurse's file. After a few minutes
St. Peter looks up, smiles, and says, "Congratulations!
You've been admitted to heaven … for five
days!"
Or this one, which fits more aptly into the blond
catagory, and for those old enough to remember, might
have fit into the classic George Burns and Gracie Allen
routine:
Doctor: "Did you take the patient's
temperature?"
Nurse: "No. Is it missing?"
True nurse jokes focus on the difficulties of the
job:
The nurse who can smile when things go wrong is
probably going off duty.
* * * * *
Did you hear about the nurse who died and went straight
to hell?
It took her two weeks to realize that she wasn't
at work anymore!
* * * * *
They found a naked dead body of a nurse washed up
on the shore today.
How did they know it was a nurse?
She had an empty stomach, a full bladder, and her
butt was chewed out.
And this, which might be the seminal nursing joke
if so much of it weren't true:
The Top Ten Reasons I Went Into Nursing:
10. I love to wear white support hose.
9. I get a kick out of arrogant doctors.
8. It's more challenging than brain surgery.
7. I get free latex gloves.
6. The scrubs are so flattering to my figure.
5. The world doesn't need any more lawyers.
4. I actually like vending machine food.
3. Somebody has to train the residents.
2. I get to spend the holidays with my friends …
at work.
1. I always wanted to say, "This won't hurt a bit."
While pharmacists and pharmacies have figured in some
wonderful professional cartoons by masters of the art
like Gahan Wilson and Robert Mankoff, and Peter's Pharmacy
appears fairly routinely in Johnny Hart's syndicated
comic strip B.C.,
there may be only one true pharmacy joke, and it isn't
even funny:
A physician is supposed to give a lecture, and writes
down his notes, but that night he discovers that
his index cards are all illegible, so he calls out:
"Is there a pharmacist in the house?"
Some professions don't seem to have any occupational
humor worth mentioning. Neither internet searches nor
telephone interviews came up with any good jokes for
medical technologists or physical therapists, but one
PT did offer the following about chiropractors:
Q:
How many chiropractors does
it take to screw in a light bulb?
A: Just
one, three times a week, for the rest of your life.
Dentists probably get less than their fair share of
jokes, and it only takes one example to show why:
A man goes to his dentist because he feels something
wrong in his mouth. The dentist examines him and
says, "That new upper plate I put in for you six
months ago is eroding. What have you been eating?"
The man replies, "All I can think of is that about
four months ago my wife made some asparagus and put
some stuff on it that was delicious … Hollandaise
sauce. I loved it so much I now put it on everything
– meat, toast, fish, vegetables, everything."
"Well," says the dentist, "That's probably the problem.
Hollandaise sauce is made with lots of lemon juice,
which is highly corrosive. It's eaten away your upper
plate. I'll make you a new plate, and this time use
chrome."
"Why chrome?" asks the patient.
To which the dentist replies, "It's simple. Everyone
knows that there's no Plate like Chrome for the Hollandaise!"
After a joke like that, nobody would want to hear
another.
Article published on Apr 24
06 12:59AM.
