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Humans are natural storytellers. We make sense of ourselves, our experiences, and the world through stories. We tell stories about the most important times, events, and people in our lives. We tell stories to create connection, build relationships, and find commonality in each other. But, we rarely share stories about the one thing we all have in common: death. We will all experience an end-of-life journey and potentially witness one.  

Storytelling helps people receiving palliative care find meaning, dignity, and closure at end-of-life, helps family and friend caregivers cope with grief and bereavement, and gives healthcare providers an outlet to process their emotions and practice empathy in their work. 

Given the benefits of storytelling in end-of-life care, our research team applied for and received funding from the Bruyere Academic Medical Organization to test the proof of concept of including storytelling as a part of emotional and psychological care for patients and their caregivers in palliative care. We specifically were interested in studying the acceptability, feasibility, and appropriateness of our storytelling initiative. 

Professional storyteller Kim Kilpatrick co-created short stories based on an idea or theme from conversations with patients, family and friend caregivers, and healthcare providers on the palliative care unit at Bruyère in Ottawa. Kim collaborated with visual and media artist Rachel Gray to create images and a narrated stop-motion film based on these stories from the palliative care unit. We have two manuscripts in progress related to this project: one describes the proof of concept study, and one uses narrative medicine techniques to analyze the content of the stories.  

We hope that you enjoy listening and/or reading a sampling of stories below!