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Black humor among physicians: good or bad?
Last reviewed: 01.07.2025
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A recent survey of palliative care physicians found that three-quarters had been the subject of dark jokes about death. Most of these jokes came from fellow physicians. An example of such a joke is the nickname "Dr. Death" bestowed upon a colleague by a medical team.
Palliative care is the provision of medical, psychological and social assistance to a terminally ill patient. Its goal is not to slow down the disease process, but to improve the quality of life of the patient and his relatives, that is, to reduce his physical and mental suffering.
Doctors who practice palliative medicine constantly see death and teach terminally ill patients to accept their departure from this world as a matter of course, without painful experiences. That is why most of these doctors calmly take the "jokes" of colleagues who may jokingly accuse the doctor, for example, of killing a patient. However, there are those who are offended by such jokes.
"What these jokes say about the medical community is that doctors and nurses are members of a pluralistic culture that naturally allows for conflicting views about care for the terminally ill and, in particular, about hastening death to relieve suffering," says Lewis Cohen, MD, of Tufts University School of Medicine.
"Healthcare workers come from different backgrounds, different faiths, different countries, and all of these factors contribute to friction among physicians," Cohen adds.
However, despite the fact that due to different views on death, “black” jokes of colleagues may offend some doctors, Dr. Cohen emphasizes that it is not worth forbidding medical workers to joke about such sensitive topics. He refers to the famous psychologist Sigmund Freud, who claimed that wit and humor are capable of reducing even very strong negative emotions to nothing, and laughter provides emotional catharsis. In addition, humor more vividly characterizes the social relations of a certain era, rather than the specific people to whom the jokes refer.
"In medicine, humor should remain a good defense mechanism against the difficult experiences associated with the professional duties of doctors. For patients, humor helps them die with dignity and even grace," summarizes Dr. Lewis Cohen.
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