How does a narrative understanding of change in families post brain injury help us to humanise our professional practice?

Abstract

In this paper, we critically explore the discourse of change post brain injury and challenge the dominant discourse of negative change, which alone leaves little room for other perspectives to exist. These negative changes pose a considerable risk to the well-being of families who may benefit from engaging in richer accounts making room for a more coherent and connected sense of self and family post-injury. We explore how narrative approaches provide opportunities for all practitioners to expand their professional scripts and support families to move towards a future which is not dominated by a discourse of loss. While loss and negative change is an important and very real consequence, of brain injury, focusing purely on stories of loss is life limiting for family members and can cause psychological distress. The life thread model is offered as a visible tool for all practitioners to engage with and use while working with families, providing a concrete focus for reflection and discussion of narratives relating to change which otherwise can feel quite abstract in everyday practice. We argue that one way we can humanise our professional practice is to support all practitioners to engage in a narrative understanding of family change following ABI.

Humanizing and dehumanizing intensive care: Thematic synthesis (HumanIC)

“…However, this suffering could be ameliorated to some extent when patients and relatives are allowed to experience closeness and connectedness with each other. This is supported by Whiffin and Ellis‐Hill ( 2021 ) who found that health care professionals played an important role in helping patients and relatives find a way to reconnect through narratives to identify a liveable future. Moreover, we found that it was humanizing when healthcare professionals offered to connect with patients and relatives in the ICU.…”

‘They think we’re just in God’s waiting room’: A discursive study on identity aloneness in stroke survivors

“…Within their paper, Ellis-Hill et al (2008) claim the life thread model is compatible with a discursive approach. However, within subsequent work citing the model (Whiffin et al, 2017;Whiffin and Ellis-Hill, 2022), the only discursive matters attended to are those of broad contextual significance. For example, passing reference to 'master narratives' (e.g., the medical model, disability norms) which apparently govern participants' understandings of illness are made without any kind of fine-grain analysis of participants' discursive practices.…”