The Power of the Human Story: How Our Patients Lift Us Just as Much as We Lift Them

by Sarah Wittmeyer, MSN RN, COS-C
Outcome Achievement Coordinator
Clinical Excellence, WI & IL Divisions, Continuing Health
Advocate Health

Human stories have the power to connect us and deepen our relationships with both our colleagues and our patients.

I experienced this recently in my role as a home health nurse educator, where I have the privilege of meeting with every new teammate on an individual basis to check in about how orientation is going -- do they have what they need to be successful? Do they understand the basic purpose of home care and their role in meeting the plethora of health outcome targets we strive for as we care for our patients, while also offering a listening ear to whatever joys or challenges have recently come their way?

Being able to connect with new staff members in this individual way is very meaningful for me. As they try to navigate a new job, learn new skills, figure out who to ask which questions (often starting over at a novice level after being an expert in their previous healthcare setting), they often feel quite overwhelmed.

On this particular day, I had the joy of meeting with a home health aide named Tracy* to check in with her regarding how her orientation to home care was going.

Besides thanking her for her role in noting and reporting any important clinical indicators like early signs of pressure injury, changes in vital signs, increased swelling or pain, I also shared with her that I have great respect for her profession due to having received a very needed bed bath at a time when I was a patient and sweaty, smelly, bloody, exhausted, and helpless.

This experience and the effect that human touch and care had on me in terms of my psychological well-being at the time was immense.

Tracy clearly understood the impact that the personal care she provides to patients can have on their mental and physical well-being.

But she said to me, “My patients often bring me more joy than I bring to them. They keep me going and they lift me up just as much as I lift them up.”

Then she shared with me that she had lost her three-month old infant just a few months before she started working for home health. This baby girl had died suddenly, leaving Tracy heartbroken and floundering.

She said one of her patients just the other day had noticed she seemed down, asked her what was wrong, and upon learning of Tracy’s loss, had shared with her her own story of sudden infant loss when she was a young mother.

This bonding of two human souls by the sharing of their stories, connected by great suffering, experienced by one very recently and by the other many years ago, was a comforting and healing moment for both Tracy and the patient.

By sharing my experience of when I was a patient to honor the role Tracy plays, we connected about the sacredness of performing intimate care for suffering human beings.

When she recounted to me how she was able to share her own personal story with her patient and be comforted by that patient in a mutual experience of deep grief, it felt like a full circle moment.

*Name changed