Storytelling with Critically Ill Patients
Children and teens who are chronically or terminally ill often are too sick to attend school and find little meaning in hospital schooling that focuses on the regular curriculum. Digital Storytelling has been found to be an excellent vehicle to help these children and their families cope with the illness, hospitalization and the future. This multimedia process allows the patients to learn new skills in all forms of literacy in a fun engaging way. It has proven to be psychologically beneficial to allow these patients to choose their story line, develop it and then create a digital story. Themes these children develop include stories you would expect from non ill children, stories of superheroes battling evil villains (often their disease) to documenting their illness journey.
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CultureChildren who are chronically and terminally ill live in an entirely different culture than those who are healthy. Their lives do not revolve around school, extra curricular activities and birthday parties, but rather, treatments, isolation and hospitalization. For many of these children schooling occurs in the hospital and until recently often based on curriculum that was of little use to them. Digital Storytelling has been an excellent way to allow students to develop their imagination, life a vicarious life or document their illness. At McMaster University Children's Hospital cancer patients begin a chain of bravery beads. These beads document treatments, milestones and remissions. I personally witnessed one young 14 year old girl document her bravery beads on camera as a way of dealing with the emotions attached to her illness. It was a very powerful thing to be a part of.
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Conflict/LegacyFamilies with a critically or terminally ill child live a different life. They are often sequestered in hospitals and life revolves around treatments, set backs and victories. Family conflict often occurs as parents struggle to deal with their child's illness and often to still manage other children at home. Children have conflicted feelings of being ill and not being at school or with their friends, as well as, feeling too ill to even take part in short conversations. For many patients and their families digital storytelling is becoming both a coping mechanism and a way of documenting their lives. It can be the product of the ill child, the ill child and parents or an entire family composition.
Digital storytelling has also been shown to help the patient and parents deal with the possibility of end of life. For many patients, as young as age seven, they use digital storytelling to help their families cope after they are gone. The patient realizes their mortality but families find it too difficult to deal with. |
Language SkillsAs mentioned previously the regular curriculum does not seem useful for many chronically or terminally ill patients. Digital Storytelling on the other hand seems more like fun than school work. In the creation of the digital story patients brainstorm, plan the story, write an outline and decide on the creation platform. They then engage in the creation of the digital story in the method they have chosen. Patients learn important literacy skills in a new way. Using digital technologies allow these children to learn in new and novel ways. It is also something that can be done in the hospital classroom or the child's room if they are too ill or in isolation. It becomes a learning opportunity but also a distraction from the routines of the hospital.
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All information gathered from personal experience or from the following article:
Dewitt-Kamada, J., & Holliday, C. (2015). Digital storytelling as a self-reflection tool. Journal of the American Psychiatric Nurses Association,
21(1), 63-64.
Dewitt-Kamada, J., & Holliday, C. (2015). Digital storytelling as a self-reflection tool. Journal of the American Psychiatric Nurses Association,
21(1), 63-64.
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