“I was back in the hospital having my dressing changed after an operation. I’d had a lot of stitches. The nurse arrived with a pen in her mouth. She took off my old dressing and ran the pen which had been in her mouth along my chest to check all the stitches. After changing my dressing she walked on to the next patient tapping the pen against her teeth.”
This is the kind of patient story that’s been used in re-training staff to be aware of ways in which hospital bugs are spread. Hearing a short account like this has proved effective in changing hospital staff’s ways of working.
The story was recounted by Dr Jonathon Gray who heads a campaign called 1000+ Lives aimed at reducing unexpected deaths in hospitals by over a thousand. The main targets are hospital bugs (mrsa, c-diff, etc.) pressure ulcers and unnoticed worsening or developing complications.
Another digital story Jonathon showed was by the daughter of a man who’d had his larynx removed. He couldn’t swallow and he’d had a catheter put in his throat to drain saliva build-up. He was at home recovering. The man had begun choking, struggled, and taken out his own catheter in panic. The woman called the ambulance and, as her father was really struggling, she’d tried to re-insert the catheter herself. When the ambulance arrived, the woman asked the paramedic to re-insert the catheter properly as her father’s throat was filling up with saliva. The ambulanceman had said “I’m sorry but I can’t touch him; we’re not allowed to do that; we’ve not been trained in this.” The woman’s story inspired the Ambulance Service to give its paramedics training in inserting this kind of catheter to prevent a repeat incident.
In the past, at hospital board meetings, when the finance officer was asked to invest in measures to combat pressure ulcers, he’d say: “Doesn’t sound too bad”. Now, all board meetings begin with patient stories and these first-hand personal stories are helping to change policy for the better.
Just goes to show the power of storytelling. I think the work Jonathon and his team is doing is fabulous and I hope the work the National Health Service does in Wales in the field of patient stories gains recognition internationally.
This is a report from the Storytelling & Health Symposium, at University of Glamorgan’s Atrium in Cardiff, 13 May 2010. I’m quoting what the storyteller said from memory, and I’m not a medic, so apologies if it’s not exactly verbatim and for any medical bloopers in my account.
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