Storytelling 2.0: Part I – Telling Better Stories in Medicine «

March 18, 2010
Posted by Elizabeth Han

Storytelling 2.0: Part I – Telling Better Stories in Medicine

Tell me a story and I will follow. Tell me your story and I am so on board it’s ridiculous.

I work at a children’s hospital that has a blog. But Bloorview Kids Rehab does more than post. It tells stories.

“Lena distracts herself by threading bravery beads onto necklaces — each marking a painful procedure or special accomplishment.” [+]
“Taryn, a girl 10 days his junior, is Jake’s girlfriend. This incredible blond-haired girl with deep dimples on both cheeks donates all her tooth fairy money to PMD research so she can help find a cure for Jake’s disease.” [+]

Note that it’s not just the facts; it’s the style. It’s like being there. Parents of children with disabilities even guest-post:

When my son with disabilities was younger, I often felt a failure because I still grieved for him. Why did I feel sad, mad, guilty and anxious – when I adored my son and he brought me such delight?

And that makes the BLOOM blog stand out.

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I’ve been thinking a lot about this storytelling business.

I just finished reading Tribes by Seth Godin, which argues that leadership requires a manifesto. I think that the manifesto is a story. It resonates because it is so intensely personal.

Who are we? How did we get here? What will we achieve?

One facet of Medicine 2.0 is caught up in the toys: like iPad for EMR – Twitter for pandemic-tracking — even my own research, an emotion recognition engine.

But we must not forget that the central unit, the ideal granularity of our work is always the patient. The patient, who has the need. Who lives the story.

The story is important.

Lest technology – heck, anything – subsume the patient, we need to tell better stories.

Quick example: Twitter in the real world

Here’s a quick example of a story that engaged me.

I had gathered these vague impressions that Twitter could be useful in health beyond networking. There was an abstract somewhere about mining tweets for medical keywords. I’d heard that some people tweeted their blood sugars? I was not too sure.

Then I saw Nick Dawson’s (@nickdawson) beautiful Prezi:

One sentence: “This weekend in Richmond, it snowed…it snowed a lot.”

A single sentence on the first pane against a backdrop of snow, and I knew it was going to be a good story. And it was. The blizzard spoke and this Virginia hospital responded, using Twitter and Facebook to reach thousands of followers.

Love it.

Prezi’s not bad, either.

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The question is: how can we achieve more like this?

Many stories are used to broadcast.

But even for the one-on-one doctor-patient relationship, good stories breed good communication and empathy.

I was also reading how some physicians are frustrated by EMRs because the data organization impedes the story. These are all points to consider.

That’s all for now.

In Part II, I’ll cover several of my recent web finds that may be useful for medical storytelling, or at least inspire us to (further) glory!

6 Comments

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http://www.healthymagination.com/ Healthymagination

Hi Elizabeth,

First, we want to thank you for putting out such a great blog! Keep up the good work.

At GE, we also believe the patient should be the center of focus. The goal of our technology and services is essentially to provide better care and outcomes for the patient. Empowering the patient to be a storyteller can be so important, especially when it comes to pediatrics.

As we know, most medical equipment in healthcare, like a big MR or CT machine, can be really overwhelming and stressful for pediatric patients. When children need to go through the process of having an imaging scan, it can be very scary for them. GE recently partnered with the Children’s Hospital of Pittsburgh of UPMC to design an entire experience centered on the medical imaging process that enables children to have a scan in a pirate ship, jungle or underwater adventure.

Check it out if you're interested: http://www.healthymagination.com/stories/pediat…

Recognizing patients as individuals and addressing their needs beyond medical science and technology can be critical to patients’ well-being, especially for pediatric patients. We believe each patient experience should be a story – an adventure that can make them forget they are even in a hospital.

http://www.hospitalsongs.com/ Elizabeth Han

Pediatric Adventures looks like an amazing project! Thank you for sharing! My research is actually on using music to help children express emotions and potentially modulate anxiety during medical procedures, so I think that healthymagination's multimedia approach is absolutely exciting.

Healthymagination

Hi Elizabeth,

Thanks, your research sounds really fascinating!

You should check out our other feature story Hip-Hop Health: http://www.healthymagination.com/stories/hip-ho…. It is about a doctor in Harlem who uses hip-hop to teach kids about the signs of stroke.

We’d love to learn more about your research. Are you focusing on any particular kinds of music? Or, age groups?

http://www.hospitalsongs.com/ Elizabeth Han

I'm focusing particularly on children with profound disabilities who are unable to communicate physically or verbally (i.e., they have “locked-in” syndrome), such as those who reside at the complex continuing care unit of Bloorview Kids Rehab (where I'm doing my grad work). These children are very vulnerable as they have no means to express their emotions and preferences, so I am working on optimizing a system to translate their physiological signals (such as skin temperature, skin conductance, and heart rate) to gentle musical elements. Since there's evidence to suggest that music might be more intuitive and easier to process than visual monitors, we expect that these “biosongs” could provide a new pathway for caregivers to engage with the children. So, we're not really focusing on a particular type of music, but as we try different physiology-music mappings, we might find that one type is most acceptable to the children and the caregivers!