Looking for someone to engage healthcare providers or students in the health professions around issues of asking for help, stress, burnout, vicarious traumatization, and constructive uses of humor? Look through the keynotes and workshops below to see some of Kelli’s most popular presentations-if you see something you like, reach out to kellidunhambooking@gmail.com. After chatting about what problems you’re looking to solve or goals for the presentations (can be via email if that works better for you) Kelli will provide a PDF proposal you can use to convince your booking committee that yes, a stand up comic IS a good idea. NOTE: Unless otherwise indicated, all workshops and presentations are also available virtually.
ARE YOU LOOKING FOR KELLI’S SPECIAL BRAND OF ROUND-MIDWESTERN FACED, TENDERHEARTED TRAINING IN LGBT HEALTH CULTURAL COMPETENCY? THERE’S A PAGE FOR THAT!
SECOND HELPING: A PRACTICAL TRAGICOMEDY [PERFORMANCE WITH TALKBACK OR WORKSHOP]
Kelli Dunham grew up the youngest child in a large Midwestern US farm family that taught self-reliance as a religion.. When Kelli lost not one but two partners in a row to cancer, and then was the victim of an unfortunate exploding knee replacement incident, she was forced to start making different choices.
In a 2021 survey of nurse managers, almost 85 percent identified “learning when and how to ask for help” as a major concern for the nurses on their units. SECOND HELPING can help start a conversation about the challenges of asking for assistance, and help build a workplace culture that celebrates mutual aid. For nursing students, SECOND HELPING can also facilitate additional discussions about stepping into the role of a nurse and what it means to be a nurse-patient or a nurse as a family caregiver.
Yes this is a performance and yes, it’s CEU-ready! Kelli can provide the learning objectives and relevant citations as part of the booking process.
FIGHT FLIGHT FREEZE…LAUGH? [KEYNOTE PRESENTATION]
In this 50-minute keynote address, nurse and comedian Kelli Dunham will lead participants through a fun and poignant consideration of the question: what’s laughter got to do with it? Anyone who works in healthcare knows there is nothing funny about the devastation our patients face (and our sometimes ludicrous working conditions) yet we’re always looking for better tools to manage the emotional and logistical impact of our own secondary post-trauma response. Enter intentional humor, stage left. In this keynote we’ll learn the capacity (and limits) of laughter in mitigating our secondary fight, flight and freeze responses, pick up some handy exercises to help build our own resilience and discover ways to decrease the amount of job stress we bring home. And we’ll laugh. A lot.
Like all of Kelli’s workshops and keynotes FIGHT FLIGHT FREEZE LAUGH is CEU ready with learning objectives and peer-reviewed literature support.
LAUGHTER AT THE END OF LIFE [PRESENTATION]
In this unique and engaging multi-media presentation, Kelli details how patients, family members, and health care providers use humor in dealing with issues of serious illness, death, dying and bereavement. This presentation draws on Kelli’s more than twenty years as a community health nurse, her experiences during the early years of the AIDS crisis as well as Kelli’s lived experience as the primary caregiver to two partners who died of cancer. This presentation not only includes a discussion of the functions of the use of humor (and related anecdotes) but also assists providers, family, and caregivers in deciding an appropriate therapeutic (read: human) response to humor in these type of situations. For 2023-2024 booking, Kelli has shared a sample handout and a virtual excerpt. [Please note that a variation of this presentation entitled HEY THAT’S NOT FUNNY, OR IS IT? USING HUMOR IN HEALTHCARE is also available. This presentation focuses more on general use of humor in healthcare situations and less specifically on death and serious illness] Need to convince your committee bringing in Kelli is a good idea? We’ve created a printable one sheet for just such a situation.
THAT’s NOT FUNNY OR IS IT? USING HUMOR FOR REFUELING IN THE HOME VISITING OR PRIMARY CARE ENVIRONMENT [INTERACTIVE PRESENTATION]
Kelli Dunham spent her first years out of nursing school working at the 11th Street Family Health Center when it was in a single borrowed room in a public housing community center in North Philadelphia. She then spent nearly a dozen years as a home visiting nurse with the Philadelphia Nurse Family Partnership, working with first time new moms (mostly teenagers) in their homes. She is the only nurse nationwide who completed all her visits on public transportation and is still remembered on the Broad Street Line as that “lady who always carries the baby scale” Kelli now divides her time between traveling as a stand-up comic and working in the New York City public school system with teenagers affected by multiple traumas.
In this hilarious and informative 90 minute interactive presentation Kelli interweaves concrete research-based tips on the uses of humor in community health practice with mutual story-sharing, not only illustrating how community based health personnel can use humor to refuel emotionally, but also actually helping them refuel.
GOT FIVE MINUTES? YOU’VE GOT SELF CARE [HIGHLY INTERACTIVE WORKSHOP]
Let’s be real. Most of us don’t have time (or a clean enough tub) for a bubble bath on a random Tuesday night or a 45-minute morning meditation practice or making our own essential oils from lavender plants we grow ourselves or whatever is being touted as the self-care flavor of the month on Instagram. But many of us have ideas of small useful moments we can create to reset our nervous systems after a stressful day/hour/meeting etc. In this interactive workshop we’ll consider what enables self-care to be truly nourishing (versus just comforting) and then collectively sharestorm (that’s a sharing brainstorm) ideas for building a self-care practice. After the workshop, Kelli will create a one-of-a-kind printable PDF with the group’s collected ideas and a commemorative coloring sheet on the back!
OUR BODIES OUR WORK OURSELVES: DISCOVERING THE POWER OF STORYTELLING FOR HEALTHCARE PROVIDERS [PRESENTATION WITH INTERACTIVE WORKSHOP]
In this workshop, providers will learn about the transformative benefit of personal storytelling, discuss how to harness this power in their work with patients as well as their co-workers, and share stories in a mutually supportive atmosphere
AND SOME SPECIAL CONTENT JUST FOR STUDENTS IN THE HEALTH PROFESSIONS…
Kelli is the author of How to Survive and Maybe Even Love Nursing School (FA Davis) which has been a frequently adopted book in Nursing 101 classes, is now in its fifth edition, and was an ANA educational Book Of The Year. Kelli really really really likes talking to nursing students. A lot.
DON’T KNOCK TIK TOK [PRESENTATION]
Some unfortunate recent incidents in which nurses poked not so gentle fun at their patients in viral social media videos have left many in healthcare wondering if humor is worth the potential problems it can cause. In this workshop, we’ll consider why it really is okay to laugh at the funny parts and why giving up on the potential huge de-stressing benefits of humor is actually the more dangerous choice. We’ll learn the functions of constructive humor in nursing or other healthcare practice, the guidelines for the appropriate use of humor (hint: context is HUGE) and remind ourselves that is really okay to laugh at the funny parts. And we’ll have a great time, and no one will make you wear a clown nose. Promise.
THE ABCS OF SURVIVING NURSING SCHOOL [PRESENTATION]
In this light-hearted multimedia keynote presentation, Kelli presents the stories and advice of more than 500 nursing educators and students she interviewed for her classic book How To Survive And Maybe Even Love Nursing School (FA Davis). Genuinely funny and genuinely helpful.
Don’t see precisely what you need here? Contact kellidunhambooking@gmail.com for a program tailored to your organization, conference or school.
Kelli writes the Second Helping Gazette: Serious Topics, Funny Writing; you can get a free subscription here.
