The following is a summary of “Medical Assistants’ Comic Styles and Their Potential for Positive Functioning at Work: A Cross-sectional Study Including a Subgroup Analysis,” published in the May 2024 issue of Primary Care by Raecke et al.
Medical assistants are indispensable to the healthcare system but encounter numerous daily demands, necessitating effective coping resources. While humor has been identified as a beneficial resource for healthcare professionals, specific studies on humor styles within this context are limited. Given that different humor styles (e.g., light versus dark) can have varying and potentially negative impacts on positive psychological functioning, it is crucial to explore their effects on medical assistants. This study investigates the relationship between medical assistants’ comic styles and their positive psychological functioning at work.
Using a cross-sectional design, researchers assessed eight comic styles (benevolent humor, fun, wit, nonsense, irony, satire, sarcasm, cynicism) and various facets of positive psychological functioning (e.g., well-being, sense of competence) among German medical assistants. The relationships between these variables were analyzed using Pearson correlations, ANCOVAs, and hierarchical regressions. Analyses were conducted on the total sample (N = 608; completion rate 44%) and a significant subsample of medical assistants working in general medicine (N = 263).
The results revealed that most light humor styles, such as benevolent humor, were positively associated with several facets of positive psychological functioning. In contrast, sarcasm, a dark humor style, was negatively associated. Other dark humor styles, like satire, had coefficients around zero or slightly positive. These patterns were also evident within the subgroup of medical assistants in general medicine.
In conclusion, the eight comic styles exhibit varying potentials for enhancing medical assistants’ positive psychological functioning at work, with benevolent humor being the most adaptive and sarcasm being the most maladaptive. This study underscores the importance of recognizing different humor styles’ (mal)adaptiveness in healthcare professionals. Training programs for professionals, such as vocational education for medical assistants, could incorporate the topic of humor to encourage the use of benevolent humor and caution against sarcastic humor. By fostering adaptive humor styles, medical assistants can better utilize this resource to manage the various challenges of their daily work, including coping with stressful situations.
Source: bmcprimcare.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/s12875-024-02363-y