Digital Storytelling: The Educational Value of Deep Dives into the Patient Experience

By: Elke Zschaebitz, DNP, FNP (she/her) Paulo Freire noted in his sentinel book….Pedagogy of the Oppressed (1968), that “one cannot expect positive results from an educational methodology which fails to respect the particular experience of people from whom language and learning is born.”1 (p.33) Freire went on to articulate that it is from the voice of the marginalized that pedagogy is created not for but with individuals in order to reverse a culture of silence, which described marginalized patients living in poverty. As a balance to AI-based learning, digital storytelling can serve as a vital humanizing force in health education. Through a video recording, we can learn that a transgender co-worker with multiple urinary tract infections does not stop along the highway to visit a bathroom because they do not feel safe. From another recorded interview, we can discover that the person with progressive multiple sclerosis wants to remain in their wheelchair as it’s easier to navigate their world than by attempting to walk unsteadily. We learn from a 60-year-old parent with heart failure lost decades of sleep at night when his severely autistic son battled insomnia. And we learn he worries about “who will take care of his son when he is gone.” In contemporary healthcare system built on a model to see as many patients as possible, we should consider adapting systems to slow down to incorporate discovery of what patients need and want. Through their lived experience, the act of slowing down refutes the logic that faster is better, that more data equals better care, that efficiency is the highest virtue. Instead, such a moment fosters what the philosopher Emmanuel Levinas called the “face-to-face encounter,’ the irreducible ethical moment when we truly see another person.2 Handing our patients the microphone to tell their stories affords us the richness of the experience, the nuances within the healing or dying process and reminds us what it is to be human. In Freire’s terms, it moves from the “banking” model where clinicians deposit knowledge into passive recipients, toward dialogue where patients become co-investigators of their own experience. Recording these authentic patient stories with their permission can make those specific experiences accessible and shareable, allowing learners to hear directly from diverse voices they might not have time to experience in their clinical rotations. Concurrently, patient storytellers can feel heard by the healthcare community, and cared about. A parent who was asked to digitally share her caregiving experience caring for her disabled daughter shared her thoughts about being recorded for students and faculty to learn about her journey: Thank you all again for asking me to participate. But mostly thank you for caring enough to study it. Many times on this journey we as parents feel invisible. While our issues may be less significant than others, the emotional strain can be crushing at times even in the best of circumstances. It gives me hope to know that there are people like you who are asking questions to understand this and hopefully it will lead to improved care management of the families who often accompany our loved ones with a disability. For a relatively low budget, using the record function in video conferencing, a digital storytelling methodology can foster understanding of complex health conditions and their treatment by layering experiences on “book knowledge,” AI visits, and clinical protocols.3 When someone describes not just their symptoms but their past experiences that created barriers to healing, there is a pathway toward understanding, empathy and clinical skill improvements that raw clinical data and AI bullet points cannot convey. Rather than seeing this methodology as a reaction to AI, there’s tremendous value in using both approaches together. AI can help process vast amount of medical literature and identify patterns, while patient and family stories ground that knowledge in human experience. Structured reflection sessions, modified clinical rotations, and digital storytelling integrated into the curriculum can provide a rich deep dive into authentic patient healthcare experiences. The paradox is that the digital world which provides us distance from our patients is the same technology that can pull us together and help us share our authentic experiences, to trust, and to feel heard. ———– About the author: For more about Dr. Elke Zschaebitz please read our welcome post or the Editors page. References Utilizing Digital Storytelling to Illuminate Social Justice and Health Disparities in a Multi-institutional Virtual IPE Program Using digital story telling to assess health students’ knowledge of interprofessional roles in the care of the older adult Digital storytelling for interprofessional collaborative practice to develop quality and service improvements Utilizing storytelling to impact faculty attitudes and beliefs about transgender people Video: A Case for Storytelling in Healthcare The views and opinions expressed in this post are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of The Royal College of Physicians and Surgeons of Canada. For more details on our site disclaimers, please see our ‘About’ page