Training Patient and Family Storytellers and Patient and Family Faculty

[Alies Maybee]

I am thinking about developing a talk about patient and caregiver stories. Is merely telling our story enough?

Should we consider learning more about how to tell an effective story so that it can help point out improvements that should be made? Do we need to learn the mechanics of speaking in public?

What do you all think? Have any of you been trained to tell your stories?

I would love to learn more.

[Virginia McIntyre]

Hello Alies

I just did a training session on sharing our stories . I think our stories are important. It is our stories that we share that make the impact and allows the audience to relate to our journey as a patient.

I have walked away with a little knowledge I do not mind sharing but I am new at this so would be very interested is what others contribute/say .

[Alies Maybee]

Thanks, Virginia. Did you deliver the training or take the training?

Are there any key points you can share? Alies

[Virginia McIntyre]

HI Alies

I attended the Canadian Pain society scientific meetings recently and they provided a few of us patients a training session on storytelling. It was a great experience and the support in the room was awesome.

I will contact the organizer and ask her if I can share the hand out she gave us. I will most certainly do up some key points and attach.

Give me a few days for I am writing a reflection on my experience.

[Alies Maybee]

That would be great! No hurry.

If anyone else has information about story telling personal or otherwise, I would be grateful.

[Claude Lurette]

Hi Alies, this is a great initiative. I took a public speaking course in 1984 and still use these tools to this day. Sharing my experiences is of my goals but I always go in with a particular message (after consulting with the hosts as to their goals) and I use my story as an example of how my care could have been different or many times, the quality of my care. I've always come from the "my story is not the whole story" perspective and usually always provide solutions to the issues and this has been very well received over the years.

let me know if you need any help

[Virginia McIntyre]

Hello

A storytelling guideline document has been uploaded it into the File Cabinet under Public Involvement in Healthcare > General Chat Files.

This I received at the patient advisors training session I attended recently.

The key message is to have 3 key points and a call to action. Repeat the 3 key points through the story in order to get the message to stick. In the hook have a word that catches their attention.This engages your audience. Be true and honest ,this is your story and know your audience.

Hope this helps

[Alies Maybee]

Virginia, this is great! Thanks so much. I'm looking forward to collecting more ideas and tips about storytelling.

I am also interested in examples of both positive and negative experiences. Cheers! Alies

[Carolyn Canfield]

Hi Virginia, Claude and Alies,

I have taken some excellent training on what Marshall Ganz (labour organizer and lecturer at the Kennedy School of Government, Harvard University) calls The Public Narrative. Although there is much more to this method, in summary, your story is made up of three parts.

Story of Self - a very brief account of experiencing something that motivates me or reminds me of my values

Story of Us - why your audience also shares the values and concerns that you have

Story of Now - why we urgently need to join together for making what change

You can do this as a three minute elevator pitch, or as an hour long finely crafted speech. I've applied this format frequently, with great success in my own public speaking in healthcare. You can even use it to introduce yourself when your turn comes around a meeting table. It helps me think about my own experiences in a very pragmatic way. How do I connect to what's important to my audience? What do I want them to do after listening to me?

This is only one way of telling your patient story, but it can help you speak concisely and persuasively. Sometimes when we are asked to tell our patient story, we try to say aloud what no one in healthcare has fully understood, acknowledged and validated. Sadly, we can't achieve those goals by talking "at" an audience. That reconciliation requires a trusted conversation with a committed and authoritative counterpart. Telling the patient story to motivate change is something different.

This Story of Self can be about something that just happened on your way to the meeting that reminded you of why you do your work, or something deeply buried in the richness of your patient experience. Selecting and revealing that thread that so truly makes you care as you do, might even be a discovery to yourself!

What we can do with this method of storytelling is use our passion to establish "common cause" on what needs to change, sometimes known in large scale as building a social movement. Barack Obama used this approach in his first Presidential campaign. Helen Bevan from NHS England has also applied and taught this method in the world of healthcare change.

Keeping the strict sequence of Story of Self + Story of Us + Story of Now has been a great discipline for me. It is easy for me to get off track. This post barely begins to explain the full training, but try it for size. See how the Public Narrative works for you.

Regards,
Carolyn

[Virginia McIntyre]

Thank you Carolyn

This is helpful.

Virginia

[Annette McKinnon]

Great idea Kerry. It would be really valuable. We were talking about story telling on the weekend at the steering committee meeting.

Story telling is so important to us, sometimes as a way to get involved in the health care system, but there are different ways to tell stories.

Sometimes people listening to our stories are looking for emotional impact to validate their choices. But that's not what we are telling them for. I look at stories as a form of data - after all, our patient stories are based on facts and things that happened to us and we don't want to see things remain the same.

I like your statement about motivating health care professionals to pursue partnerships for improvements.

[Kerry Stewart]

I think it would be wonderful to have a collection of resources that would assist us in telling our stories. We don't all become good story tellers just because of our healthcare experiences yet it is those very stories that remind healthcare providers of why they chose this calling and can motivate them to pursue partnerships for improvements.

Sent via Groupsite Mobile.

[Alies Maybee]

I agee, Kerry. I find it hard to pick a story to start with. Your comment about stories being data is bang on. I have no interest in providing an emotional story but would rather use my story to shine a light on an issue.

[Annette McKinnon]

Here's a link to a paper about story telling. Maybe it will give us a few novel ideas

Training Patient and Family Storytellers and Patient and Family Faculty

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3783065/

[Virginia McIntyre]

Annette

This is great.

Thanks

[Judy Birdsell]

Patients for Patient Safety Canada did a webinar 3 years ago involving members (patients who have experienced harm) and several with expertise in story telling. The webinar was excellent. I'm not sure if the video is still available, ut a short list of tips and key messages is at : http://www.patientsafetyinstitute.ca/en/toolsResources/Pages/Tips-on-ways-to-share-your-story.aspx

Not sure it adds to the great references already mentioned, but is another Canadian link.

[Virginia McIntyre]

Judy

I find this Link helpful

Thank you

Virginia

[Alies Maybee]

So glad the Making Stories Matter tip sheets were helpful. We would welcome additional feedback and ideas for other things that are helpful to us as advisors.

Let's share so we can all learn from each other how to be more effective as advisors. Cheers! Alies

[Virginia McIntyre]

HI Mary Anne

I am curious as to what visual aids you used for telling your story.

I may have to present in 2018 on the impact of peer support, I am also a peer support facilitator.

Virginia

[Carolyn Canfield]

Hi Virginia, I'm not sure why your entry is missing from this string, but here is your question again: I am curious as to what visual aids you used for telling your story. I may have to present in 2018 on the impact of peer support, I am also a peer support facilitator. Virginia

Further to Alies' questions and Mary Anne's reply...

I do a lot of public speaking for many different healthcare audiences, and like Mary Anne I use metaphor extensively. My slide decks are almost entirely images that I find on Google Images that have no fee for use. I post the copyright citation or url, if it is available. I do not add words to the image, just show a slide with an image.

As one example, when I talk about the systems response to my husband's avoidable hospital death, I have a photo of Nick on one side of a slide and a dramatic (and well-known) photo of a train wreck in Paris on the opposite side. I say that one person died in each incident but the response was very different. The train wreck was unavoidably obvious, thoroughly investigated, resolution sought with the victim's family and system flaws remedied. Nick's death was easy to ignore, never reviewed. I and his devastated care team were abandoned and no learning would support change. So that's why I do my work: help professionals recover from bad care events and see to it that Nick's death has meaning.

I rely on images as symbols for nearly everything in my talks. I don't like having slides read to me by presenters, so among my 40 slides, maybe three have words that I reference but suggest are to be read carefully later. A two or three others might have 7-10 word "Big Ideas" that I speak to.

You didn't ask, but what I've learned about my own talks is that the total number of slides is about the minimum time: 40 slides = 40 minutes. That includes my four essential slides:

• title slide with date, audience and my name and contact info

• second slide for stating disclosures: no formal healthcare training, this is voluntary unpaid work, my bias is from the patient, family and public perspective

• third slide with a lit lightbulb on an open palm, to which I state the two or three "takeaway" ideas I will be offering

• final "Thank-you!" and "Questions?" with my contact information clearly given to encourage follow-up.

My slide deck is always available to participants afterwards through the organizers. I also agree to have my talks video recorded to spread my messages beyond the room.

I hope all this helps you Virginia, and PAN members everywhere. We each have our own style. Perhaps other PAN members would like to offer their approach to slide preparation? Good luck in developing your own style!

Cheers, Carolyn

[Anita Lambert-Lanning]

thank you, MaryAnn, for taking the step(s) to share your story with us.

anita l-l

[Susan Macaulay]

Visuals are always more powerful than words.

Max #words on a slide = 9 (3 bullets x 3 words/ bullet), BUT preferably NO words, just pics.

Also, fewer more powerful visuals tend to be better then more. Less = more.

My two cents.

[Annette McKinnon]

Thanks for the help with the storytelling presentation Alies and I did.

And I want to agree. The most successful talks I have done have been speaking to my slides when they are mainly pictures.

I have a good one for the revolving door of medicine, and the burden of disease, though disease sounds so 1900's

[Amy Ma]

Carolyn, Susan,

Thanks for these useful tips. I too, have found that the fewer the words, the better.

Too much visual clutter on a slide, and your audience is not really paying attention to what you are saying.

[Susan Macaulay]

Bingo Amy!