Humor and pain management. A review of current literature.

The purpose of this article is to provide a review of current literature related to humor and pain management. A brief review of the benefits of humor on the body is followed by a literature review of articles on humor and pain management, including research articles and scholarly articles on the topic. Research studies on the use of humor with both acute and chronic pain will be reported. The review of scholarly unresearched articles will include articles giving guidelines for humor use, suggested humor assessment guidelines, discussion of the nurse's role with humor use, and implementation strategies via humor carts and rooms.