Stories We Tell Each Other to Heal: Ricky Leiter, Alexis Drutchas, & Emily Silverman

GeriPal - A Geriatrics and Palliative Care Podcast

We’ve covered stories before. With Liz Salmi, Anne Kelly, and Preeti Malani we talked about stories written up in the academic literature, such as the JAMA Piece of My Mind series. We talked with Thor Ringler, who helped found the My Life My Story Project at the VA and beyond, and Heather Coats about the evidence base for capturing patient stories.

Today’s podcast is both similar and different. Similar in that the underlying theme of the power of stories. Different in that these storytelling initiatives, the Nocturnists and the Palliative Story Exchange, are focused on clinicians sharing stories with each other in small groups to heal. There’s something magical that happens in small group storytelling. It’s that mixture of intimacy and vulnerability, of shared clinical experiences, that fosters a sense of belonging. We model that small group storytelling experience today.

We discuss:

• The “origin stories” of the Nocturnists Live Show and Podcast and the Palliative Story Exchange

• The process for story creation and development, written in advance or not, feedback or not after the story, and the aims and goals of each initiative

• And we each tell a short story, modeling the process for The Nocturnists and the Palliative Story Exchange for our listeners

These initiatives arose organically from clinicians as part of a journey away from burnout, moral distress, shame, and loneliness toward healing, wholeness, gratitude, and belonging. A journey taken one story at a time.

One final note on the song request: About 20 years ago I took an epidemiology course as part of a Masters program. The instructor, Fran Cook, gave all the students a survey without explanation. We answered the survey and handed it in. One of the questions was, “Can you name a song by the Tragically Hip?” It later turned out the survey was a prognostic index designed to determine if the respondent was Canadian.

-@AlexSmithMD

Here’s a link to an article about the Palliative Story Exchange.