If you were coming to terms with an illness or injury, which would have more impact on your attitude during recovery: medical advice and information, or the story of another person’s experience with the same affliction, as told by them?

‘Patient narrative’, the account of illness events experienced by the narrator, is the sharing of first-hand experiences, rather than the retelling of other people’s experiences. It’s a concept that is taking off as its beneficial effects are increasingly recognised, and it's something employers can encourage their employees to access during  recovery and return to work after an injury or illness.

[The video below is an example of patient narrative; we hear about the challenges of depression and returning to work. © Speaking From Experience.]

“Evidence supports the notion that people need both medical and narrative information,” says Tina Campbell, founder of Speaking From Experience and Real Time Health, and PhD candidate at the Centre for Health Policy, Programs and Economics at the University of Melbourne.

This knowledge can take two equally valid – though not equally accessible – forms: medical knowledge and patient knowledge. “Patient knowledge,” says Ms Campbell, “is the information that health professionals can’t really provide; and that’s information about how you can live with the particular condition on a day-to-day basis.”

It’s the sort of information Real Time Health makes available. The site contains hundreds of first-hand accounts of people’s experiences with asthma, depression, stroke, heart disease and a myriad of other conditions.

“We get a lot of feedback at Real Time Health that hearing other people’s experiences reduces the sense of feeling alone – they don’t feel quite so isolated…Patient narrative can help people learn from the experiences of others about how to manage their particular condition and particular situation.”

Ms Campbell relates patient narrative to an increased sense of self-efficacy, which she defines as “the belief in one’s ability to succeed in a chosen task and achieve set goals; a sense of confidence that you can actually affect change.”

Self-efficacy plays an important role in recovery or rehabilitation, impacting on the choices patients make regarding such things as whether they’re persistent in self-care behaviours, how much effort a person expends in managing their condition and how motivated they are to return to work.

“The evidence shows that patient narrative does improve people’s ability to cope with their condition. It improves their knowledge and can influence their motivation to self-manage, therefore improving self-efficacy. Anything an employer can do to assist that pathway is important.”

How might employers provide their employees with the opportunity to access patient narrative?

One option is to partner up an employee who has successfully returned to work following, for example, a back injury, with an employee currently dealing with the same injury. “To help an employee connect with other employees that might be going through the same situation does make a difference,” Ms Campbell says.

Alternatively, employers can direct employees towards relevant support groups – another means through which patient narrative and patient experiences can be accessed. “The many people I’ve interviewed over the years have all spoken about the help that support groups have provided them. They can tap in to useful management strategies that others have found through their own experiences and I think that’s probably one of the most important things, being able to access the management strategies of others.”

In doing so, a person dealing with an illness or injury may feel less like they are stepping into the unknown. They can learn from the experiences of others and need not feel so alone, hearing that others too are experiencing the same sorts of hurdles that they are.

The right knowledge is a powerful tool in the recovery and return to work process.

“When people are newly diagnosed they don’t really know what lies ahead and how to approach things, and hearing what other people have done is really helpful,” says Ms Campbell. “The other thing it does is it gives people permission to feel they way they do by hearing other people’s experiences, and hearing that perhaps from time to time other people don’t feel so good or so happy gives them permission in a sense to feel the way they do.”

Whether the sharing of these stories occurs on a one-on-one basis, through support groups or by accessing the sort of work being done at Real Time Health, employers can help employees gain access to patient narrative, says Ms Campbell; “The evidence says that it’s an effective way to help employees deal with their particular condition.”