Enhancing person-centred care with patient stories

Working with AQuA, People’s Voice Media are about to start piloting the use of storytelling and story curation processes in enhancing person-centred care in health care settings. As part of this pilot, the team are embedding innovative and creative elements related to storytelling as part of a wider person-centred care programme for therapy staff working within the NHS. During this programme, workshops will be held that will enable staff to gather patient stories, analyse them to ascertain their key findings and produce a plan as to how they can share this learning with their wider team. Following the workshops, PVM with work with AQuA to produce a short film that highlights the key findings from this work.

The techniques being adopted in the pilot have been designed as part of the Our Voices project which has designed a pan-European and multi-medium approach to story curation. Working with this methodology and its tools such as knowledge mobilisation strategies, the UK partner and project lead – People’s Voice Media – are seeking to unlock the hidden insights in stories to help create better health care services for the future.

Rachel Bryers – Person Centred Care Lead at AQuA – says “gathering patient’s stories can be the first step in recognising that people with lived experience are often best placed to advise us on how we can deliver our services in a way that makes a positive difference to their lives. This programme focuses on understanding what matters to the patient and gave clinicians time and opportunity to reflect on how decisions are made within the hospital setting”. By experimenting with storytelling and the sharing of patient stories the pilot will offer therapy staff a new tool to drive forward quality improvement in the NHS.