“Stories are metaphors for life, they are how we change the world…”
Dr Phil Hammond, GP, Comedian and Broadcaster
provoking debate to generate change
“Stories are metaphors for life, they are how we change the world…”
Dr Phil Hammond, GP, Comedian and Broadcaster
Mitzi Blennerhassett says
Thanks for giving me this link, Phil. What a great use of patients’ stories – just what’s needed. Patient experience surveys can have limited use, but they need to be carried out well after the experience as well as close to it, so that people have had time to discover more about their condition, side effects of treatments etc and what information they might have found useful at the time. Also, surveys need quality user input from the outset of writing, not tick-boxing.
I’ve been speaking out about cancer patients’ needs for the past 20 years with articles in medical journals, books and presentations, but this is a great way to get the message across. Patients’ stories encourage the audience to engage with feelings – the story-teller’s and their own. I hope many health professionals will feel inspired to look at how they can improve compassion and patient safety in healthcare.
Laura E Carter says
I would like to comment on the way patients are handled by NHS staff – the older you are the more (it seems) you are roughly treated… i.e. leaving the last 4 X-Rays I was barely able to walk because I was pushed and pulled so much .. no need for any of it, I am perfectly able to move positions on the ‘high’ bed and also stand on my own.. But men and women in NHS treat you as if you are a piece of meat or a lump of clay … my ankle was bruised where they had grabbed me and my bad leg was disturbed so much that I had trouble even walking out of there!!
Is it too much to ask that X-Ray staff learn to be far more gentle when asking a patient to get in a certain position WITHOUT grabbing them and pulling them… I already suffer from bad arthritis and you can see this in my ankles, hands and wrists etc, yet I am always grabbed !!
My right knee and leg was in terrible pain, that is why I was sent for an X-Ray – what is the first thing the staff do!! they grab my leg/knee and TWIST it to move me… Stop this cruel practice… Patients DO NOT like this treatment – also a genuine smile from staff would be really good.. the young nurse trainees are only thinking about the young Dr’s they can ‘snare’
that is their word from their own mouths .. never mind about the patients or the CORRECT dose
of medicine .. just let’s flirt with and distract the young Dr’s.. Nursing has gone way dow.!