Category: Patient narrative

Social media as a new outlet for gratitude

Cards displayed on the ward, chocolates in the common room… but there is an increasing trend to use Facebook as a collective noticeboard to proclaim gratitude. Showing Thanks is a recently established webpage for conveying gratitude to healthcare professionals involved in maternity care and childbirth. Mothers have been posting their stories on this Facebook site and then Rachel Ellie Gardner has taken it upon herself to let healthcare trusts know when a member of their staff has been thanked.

Anecdotally, we know that staff involved in obstetrics get a lot of gratitude. Even if a birth has been dramatic (and, let’s face it, most births have elements of trauma), the outcome is usually happy.

Automated feedback texts

An article on the Guardian’s ‘Comment is free’ website is attracting a lot of attention. Within two days of posting, it has been ‘shared’ on social media nearly 27,000 times and attracted 650 comments. The article is a first-person account of experiencing a miscarriage. The couple received excellent, sympathetic care, undermined somewhat by an automated text the next day asking, ‘How likely are you to recommend our A&E department to your friends and family if they needed similar care or treatment?’ The text presented a 5-point Lickert scale and asked respondents to text back 1 to 5 on the basis of how likely there were to recommend that A&E.

The ‘Thank you’ project

This is a sad story with a heartwarming ending. When Kellie Haddock’s son Eli was a few months old, the family was involved in a card accident that killed her husband and left Eli with serious injuries. A chance meeting at a prayer group led to a film being made of Kellie finding everyone involved in saving Eli’s life, thanking them personally, and inviting them to a concert to celebrate Eli’s recovery. The blog posting about how it came to be made is here.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SwKyauE_l-k

Toasty thank you on ‘Saturday Live’

The programme ‘Saturday Live’ on Radio 4 has a regular slot where listeners say ‘thank you’ for good deeds. Health care professionals are regularly thanked on the show. Today (3 January) there was a lovely item in which a nurse was interviewed about thanks expressed by patients. The story started some months ago when a patient, Rami Seth (sp?), came on to express thanks for a slice of warm toast smuggled in by nurse Rosie Wilson while he was recovering from major surgery. Rosie spoke eloquently about how touched she was to hear the thanks expressed. It brought home how a small gesture, such as delivering a slice of warm toast, can mean a great deal to patients.

A creative expression of gratitude

Rina Dave has found a wonderful way to celebrate the healthcare professionals and her friends and family who are supporting her through he treatment for cancer. She has created large-scale photographs of caregivers, each personalised by an ‘accoutrement’ that gives a glimpse of their personalities. Read more about the exhibition, on display from  17 to 30 November 2014 in the main entrance of Imperial College.

Gratitude for whatever

Angus D H Ogilvy has written a cycle of poems in response to his diagnosis and treatment for cancer, called Lights in the Constellation of the Crab. He performs his poem, ‘Gratitude for whatever’ here.

Gratitude for Whatever

I can’t be anything other than grateful.

What’s the point?

Anger? Hatred? Jealousy? Lamentation?

It is too hard work.

Gratitude is the point of least resistance.

Through the casualness of ‘whatever’ in the title, and spelled out more explicitly in the poem, the poet suggests that gratitude is the default emotion – the one that requires least work to achieve. The tone of the poem is one of resignation.