The storied mind: A meta-narrative review exploring the capacity of stories to foster humanism in health care

Abstract

Objective: Healthcare organizations are increasingly engaging the voice of patients and families through storytelling initiatives in hopes that this will yield compassionate and humanistic outcomes. To date, very little research is available that directly guides and justifies storytelling initiatives as a mechanism for promoting humanistic culture shifts in healthcare. This review aimed to uncover diverse research and evidence on how storytelling can be utilized to promote humanistic shifts in healthcare organizations. Methods: A meta-narrative review and analysis was undertaken including qualitative, quantitative, theoretical, and conceptual papers. Searches were restricted to English Language journals, and no time frame restrictions were made. A literature assessment form was created to guide the review using a consistent taxonomy to appraise each paper. Analysis was done in two-stages: firstly, identifying emergent themes within each research discipline; secondly, comparing and contrasting themes from the different disciplines. Results: A total of 115 papers were identified for review resulting from the literature review protocol. Eighty-three papers were included in the final review: 48 papers from Healthcare/Medicine combined, 28 from Business, 14 from Education, 5 from Organizational Development and 19 from Humanities (inclusive of Psychology and Communications). There were three key findings: 1) Storytelling promotes sense-making while also perpetuating bias; 2) Stories are uniquely primed to elicit empathy and compassion; 3) Story listening and how stories are interacted with by the listener are key considerations for organizations aiming to shift culture. Conclusions: This review solidifies storytelling as a mechanism suited to furthering humanistic practices in healthcare while contributing new knowledge in support of developing policies, strategies and research initiatives that account for how stories are understood and the processes that encourage reflection and interaction by listeners.

Triumph and adversity: Exploring the complexities of consumer storytelling in mental health nursing education

“…The power of storytelling for enhancing understanding and emphasizing the humanness of specific situations has been consistently described in the literature in relation to education (Hall & Powell 2011;Gidman 2013) and healthcare (Rose et al 2015). More specifically, in mental health, storytelling is described as bringing humanity to the experiences of people diagnosed with mental illness and enhancing students' capacity to understand those experiences from a personal and human perspective (Grant et al 2012).…”

The 4 I’s of Entrepreneurship: A Study of the Entrepreneurial Perspectives behind A Failed Large-Scale Distributed Research Infrastructure

“…A significant aspect of a narrative review is that it makes explicit search criteria and inclusion criteria (Green, Johnson, Claire, & Adams, 2006). Study I sought to unveil the patterns and/or significant themes discussed by the extant literature on the subject (Rose et al, 2016). The ambition was to reveal existing themes found within the contemporary academic discourse and to what degree these themes were supported by the unearthed articles, and thereby garner an understanding for what theme was the most prevalent in the ongoing academic debate on the subject (Cronin, Ryan, & Coughlan, 2008;Penrose & Katz, 2010).…”

Words, Camera, Music, Action: A Methodology of Digital Storytelling in a Health Care Setting

“…Second, an objectivist epistemology is inherently suspicious of an individual's objective memory recall (Crotty, 1998), which shifts the focus away from finding meaningful lessons in a story to a preoccupation with confirming if the events "actually" occurred in the way they were described. Finally, health care research and practice often has a homogenous, ethical framework in which blinded studies and fully de-identified data are the gold standard (Rodgers, 2005). Therefore, participants using their own voices and photos in a DS could be viewed as an ethical breach of confidentiality.…”

“…Health care, like many sectors, is currently experiencing a storytelling renaissance (Rose, Mason-Lai, Brocke, Page, & Cawthorpe, 2016). This is facilitated in part by the convergence of influential ideas of narrative medicine (Charon, 2001;Holmgrem, Fuks, Boudreau, Sparks, & Kreiswirth, 2011), reflective practice (Schön, 1983(Schön, , 1987, patient engagement (Carman et al, 2013;National Academies of Science [NAS], 2011), person-centered care (NAS, 2001), participatory action research (Koch & Kralick, 2006), and the emerging discipline of the health humanities (Crawford, Brown, Baker, Tischler, & Abrams, 2015).…”