Patient stories
» Listen to or read patient stories already collected within WA Health
What are ‘Patient Stories’?
Patient Stories involves collecting stories from patients’ personal experiences to understand how they perceived the health care they have received in the WA Health system.
Patients talk about what they felt, saw, heard, the emotions that were evoked and how this may have affected their decisions and actions during their journey.
These insights are an important component in understanding how we can improve on many different aspects of service delivery and care in our hospitals, and in our community based health care programs.
How can ‘Patient Stories’ be used?
Patient Stories involves looking at different ways to organise services around the needs and preferences of patients, rather then the needs and preferences of services. Stories can therefore be used:
- to examine aspects of the patient journey, through data collection for a clinical service redesign project;
- to understand the whole patient experience to assist staff through education and reflection; and
- to support an audit of the impact a service improvement and innovation project has made to a patient’s journey or experience, and whether improvements have been sustained over a period of time.
How can I collect and use ‘Patient Stories’ for my project / program?
Patient Stories should be collected as part of a service improvement project to gain the most value from the experience.
To assist with the process of collecting a using Patient Stories, please download Patient Stories: A toolkit for collecting and using patient stories for service improvement in WA Health (PDF, 1.01MB).
How can I share my Patient Stories?
If you have collected patient stories as part of a service improvement project and would like to share your stories and learnings with other WA Health staff, please email your details to hrit@health.wa.gov.au.
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