Patient voices
"As I live through my own story and hear of others through a different lens, I realise that this must be the currency for transforming the NHS... By listening to patients and making their voice and experience an integral part of the commissioning and planning services, perhaps we can achieve a patient-centred NHS " (Thomas 2006, page 23).
Introduction
Patient stories can help build understanding that is based on actual experience. Stories can stimulate reflection and lead to the development of new ideas.
According to Wilcock et al (2003), stories have three important qualities:
- They are memorable and can be powerful incentives for change.
- Because stories describe direct experience they can change a listener's understanding by offering fresh insights that may resonate with the listener's own experience and knowledge of the context.
- Stories can cross boundaries and appeal to a broad range of audiences. "From this point of view, stories appear particularly helpful for use by interprofessional teams with members from a wide variety of personal and professional backgrounds" (Wilcock et al 2003, page 425).
The stories
- A patient's personal experience of acquiring the skills of self management. Read more.
- What a difference someone listening makes. Read more.
- Priorities, hopes, ambitions. Read more.
Other sources of patient stories
Diabetes Stories: personal tales of diabetes through the decades
This website, based at the Oxford Centre for Diabetes, Endocrinology and Metabolism (OCDEM), presents 100 audio interviews with people with diabetes, members of their families and healthcare professionals. The stories "are offered as a resource for historians, healthcare professionals, people with diabetes and their families, and all those interested in the ways people remember and make sense of their lives". They also provide a unique oral history covering experiences of diabetes and changes in treatment from the late 1920s until the first decade of the 21st century.
Diabetes UK: Your stories
Diabetes UK website: "Diabetes stories of people from all walks of life, who were happy to share their experiences".
Diabetes UK: People like me
Diabetes UK website: Stories from young people. There is also a separate area for stories from children.
NHS Choices: Diabetes blog
This is one of a series of blogs on different conditions in the NHS Choices website which aim to give peoples views of living with these conditions.
Patient Voices
This website presents Pilgrim Projects collection of digital patient stories and describes how the project developed and widened. The stories are from patients, carers and healthcare practitioners. The site has been set up so that you can search by topic using your browser's find facility to find relevant stories.
Youthhealthtalk.org: Diabetes Type 1
The Youthhealthtalk website is about young people's real life experiences of health and lifestyle. This section includes interviews with 39 young people about their experiences of Type 1 diabetes.