The topic of humor (and laughter) in healthcare contexts has attracted considerable scholarly interest, especially in professional-patient communication. Yet much remains to be investigated about its forms and functions in backstage inter-professional interaction from a discourse analytical/pragmatic perspective. In this light, this paper explores the role of humor in interpersonal conflict management in hospital handover meetings with the aim of providing insights into both the various functions this inconspicuous discursive strategy may perform on a macro-level, as well as the way this is achieved at the micro-level. Interpersonal conflict is said to be an inherent aspect of such high-stakes medical settings, and conflict management is of vital importance for negotiating patients’ cases and treatment paths. Drawing on authentic handover meetings recorded at a hospital in New Zealand, we provide useful insights into the ways in which conflicts are managed and medical knowledge is transferred in these backstage encounters. The paper shows how different kinds of potentially face-threatening humor is used to manage and avoid conflict by those in superior as well as those in more junior positions. Finally, we argue that these ways of ‘doing’ humor in conflict management are a reflection (and reinforcement) of the team’s close-knit social relations and directly address the high-stakes nature of these medical encounters.