About Patient Voices
The idea for Patient Voices (captured in Patient Voices: the rationale) arose from the desire to harness the power of patients' stories to bring to life the 20-credit e-learning courses Clinical Governance Matters and Clinical Governance Works that the Royal College of Nursing had commissioned Pip Hardy to write for the UKHEP BSc (Hons) in Health Sciences.
Digital stories created by Brendan Routledge in his education work with children, appropriately referred to as 'Powerpoint for the soul', provided the perfect format to put patients firmly at the heart of healthcare.
The first digital patient stories were developed for use in PowerPoint presentations, and were enthusiastically supported by Paul Stanton and funded by the NHS Clinical Governance Support Team.
Interest in the use of digital stories in healthcare education has not been restricted to the NCGST and, in 2004, Pilgrim Projects were asked to enter the stories in the Dartmouth Clinical Microsystems Film Festival, at the 2004 Fall Invitational in Vermont. We were delighted to win two awards, including the Paul Batalden People's Choice Award. More recently we were delighted to be runners-up for the John Horder Award for Innovation in Interprofessional Learning, presented at the Higher Education Academy’s 2007 Festival of Learning.
We at Pilgrim Projects believe that the benefits to all those involved in healthcare (staff, carers and patients) from the use of digital storytelling as an educational methodology and developmental tool warrant wider use of the stories. It seems that we are not alone: the original 23 stories have now grown to over 100, and we have developed this website to accommodate them. Patient Voices: a valediction, written three years after Patient Voices: the Rationale, attempts to convey something of the flavour of the programme as it has developed.
The collection continues to expand, and we have had the pleasure of working with many wonderful people from a wide range of NHS organisations and educational institutions. We have carried out research into the impact of the stories and are regularly invited to give presentations about their creation and use. Our working relationship with the Center for Digital Storytelling is stronger than ever and we are currently collaborating to develop digital story facilitation training specifically for the healthcare sector.
We hope the stories you see here touch your hearts as they have ours.
To find out more
The presentation Voices from the heart of healthcare, which you can access from the links at left, tells more about the programme, but please be patient as this is a 17 minute movie, which may take some time to download.
The paper Patient Voices: an investigation into improving the quality of healthcare using digital patient stories was prepared as part of Pip Hardy's MSc in Lifelong Learning.
A summary of what's happening in the programme is available in the Patient Voices newletter.
LINKS:
http://www.digitalstorylibrary.scot.nhs.uk/
http://google-sina.com/2008/04/01/help-improve-inpatient-care-diabetes-uk/
http://www.institute.nhs.uk/quality_and_value/high_volume_care/focus_on%3a_diabetes.html
http://www.jitscotland.org.uk/action-areas/themes/involvement/digital-stories.html
