Are you telling stories at work? I tell stories all the time. Stories help me explain complex ideas and solutions in global health. Stories also help me explain how health systems need to change to work more efficiently, deliver better quality of healthcare services and do it consistently to every patient everywhere every day.
A story also can help your colleagues and counterparts to get to know you and find better and more synergistic ways to work together. Here is a story that makes that point. Many years ago, I was working in the Philippines and my project was about to launch a new grant program to help local governments improve the quality and quantity of MCH/FP services they provided. To understand how the new program would fit into the health system regular operations and existing initiatives, I decided to visit a number of health centers and gather the views of the health providers. What I learned was far beyond that. I learned how to effectively coach another healthcare professional to succeed making the best of what they already have. Here is what happened:
At about 2pm I arrived at the first health center on my itinerary, and I found a nurse busy filling in registers and adding up numbers to report the consultations she had given in the morning. You see, in those days, the health information system was not integrated or streamlined, and most health workers delivered care in morning and had to spend all afternoon filling in registers and other data collection forms manually and writing reports to each of the program units.
The nurse was obviously very busy and here I was to tell her about a new program that might mean more work for her. Not good news. Instead, I thought of changing my approach and try to understand the impact my new program might have on her. So I asked her to tell me about what she did every day to help the communities in the health center catchment area and how I could help her. She told all the numerous programs she had to implement and I listened to her problems, how busy she was and how many hours of unpaid overtime she has to put in to get everything done. I listened to understand what her day was like and how she managed her work load. I had been working in various other countries in similar situations and easily thought of a few ways she could organize her work more efficiently and save herself time and effort. Instead of giving her this unsolicited advice, I decided to shift her attention to something she could do and successfully accomplish right away.
I had noticed there were a number of unopened boxes in her office, possibly a shipment of some sort that had not been unpacked yet. She said the boxes were from a donor church in the US that supported the health center and welcomed my help to unpack. She found a new baby scale in one of the boxes and I asked how she could use it. She said that if she had time, she would start a growth monitoring program. She was really concerned about the number of malnourished children in her area. I kept asking her how she would organize the program and she went on to develop a whole new and very well thought-out program. She told me how she would train a number of mothers to weigh every child every week. After the weigh-in, she would hold a meeting to discuss various nutrition topics, such as breastfeeding, weaning practices, cooking for infants and young children, etc. After I listened to hear and realized she really had a good idea of how to put the new program together, that is when I told her my project had a new program that could help her make that program a reality. She smiled at me. There was new hope and enthusiasm in her smile, and at that time I knew my grant program would work if we turned it around so we could support the initiatives and leadership of every health worker.
Now tell me, what did you learn from this story? What can you apply to your work? What did you learn about the kind of work I do in global health? What story can you tell about how you work and support other healthcare providers to improve how they work?
Remember the three parts of telling a story in global health:
- First say the point you are trying to make: My point here is for you to know the importance of being an effective storyteller in global health.
- Second, tell the story: Who did what and how are your guide to what to say. It helps is you explain why this matters. It makes it more memorable if there is some problem or conflict that was solved.
- Lastly, ask a question to help your audience apply what they learned: What story do you think you would like to tell first?
To learn more about “Storytelling in Global Health,” please listen to our Storytelling podcasts. They are number 21, 22 and 23. Just click here: https://www.realizingglobalhealth.com/podcast/
Next time, I will tell you another story.
Until next time,
Elvira
