Efforts to put empathy to use in healthcare has produced a sub-genre of clinical humor that pokes fun at the instrumentalization of feeling. This talk explores how dark humor, which uses incongruity to point out social and structural absurdities, might serve as a productive mode of cognition and critique, and also a space for essential conversations about burnout, patient care, clinical competence, and compassion.
Jane F. Thrailkill is Bowman and Gordon Gray Distinguished Term Associate Professor at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.
The Health Humanities Lab, run by the Franklin Humanities Institute, is an initiative that bridges the humanities, Duke Health, and the Duke Global Health Institute.