My name is Aschwin van Loon. I have worked on neurology wards and neuro surgery wards for almost two decades and after working as a registered senior nurse at a rehabilitaion centre on a ward with MS, lower and upper leg amputees and paraplegics patients, I am back at where i starterd, Neurology and Neuro surgery. I have always wondered why we, as nursing staff, always use humour when we are around other nurses but almost never when we are around our patients.

I have been born in 1970 and I grew up in, for me, a fantastic time period (the 1980's and the 1990's). Where a lot was aloud to do and was excepted. In a home where humour (especially British Humour) was always present.
I have beautiful twin daughters. One of my hobbies is being a hockey referee.

I started nursing care when I was in my late twenties after I had done another education in sports. In teaching sports to children I discovered that using humour, as a teaching tool was very effective and helped to get kids to do as you wanted them to do. But this also enhanced their joy in the sports.

During my education to become a nurse I noticed that there was always humour about patients when nurses where talking to each other but never humour with patients.

With this knowledge I started experimenting to use humour with patients and discovered that I liked doing it and most of the patients liked it too because it brightened up their day when I was around. They often said that they were glad when I came back the next day.

During the early days of my experimenting with humour as a student nurse, I got a lot of bad reviews because of my humour and most reviews told me that I couldn’t use humour in a hospital because it was inappropriate. But this made me even more determent to use it.

After that I started to do some research and came across the movie ‘Patch Adams’ from Universal Studios (1998). As I watched this movie I saw the same thing as I was dealing with. People thought it to be inappropriate to use humour in a hospital.

Now (read 2020) this is starting to change. Everyone is seeing the advantages of Humour as a Nursing Intervention

To graduate from nursing school I had to write a thesis. I didn’t want to do it about subjects as: Tube feeding, effective care of patients with… or what’s the best way to... No, I wanted to be original and have something that hasn’t been done (much) and I came up with ‘Humour’. But this was still way to big topic and I had to narrow it down somewhat. Finally after much taking and debating with my thesis counsellor I came up with ‘Humour as a Nursing Intervention’.

It was a difficult subject but I like challenges. I started to write my thesis at the end of 2001 and it was ready in January 2002. I successfully defended this thesis and became a licensed and registered nurse in March 2002.

In 2013 while attending the World Neuroscience Congress of the WFNN in Japan i came in contact with Vicki Evans and we talked about humour in general and she helped me to publish my thesis as an article in the Australasian Journal of Neuroscience.

But during my research for my thesis I noticed there wasn’t much to be found about humour and nursing care.
Now years later (read 2015) I decided that it is time to do something about it.

And it is still work in progress and development !!

Many may have noticed but i write every 3 to 4 weeks about humour. Please check it out and if you are interested in that blog or have a question about that blog, leave a comment !!