<
https://reasonstobecheerful.world/older-patients-caregiving-life-stories-memorywell/>
"When Jay Newton-Small moved her father Graham, who had Alzheimer’s, into an
assisted living facility, he was no longer able to tell or remember much of his
life story. His daughter was asked to fill out a detailed questionnaire about
his life, but she wondered, who would remember 20 hand-written pages for each
of the 100-plus residents in that community? Tapping into her experience as a
longtime
Time magazine correspondent, Newton-Small tried a different
approach: she typed up his story on one page for his caregivers and pasted it
on the walls.
Newton-Small says that this simple act of storytelling transformed his care.
Born in Australia, her dad had lived an adventurous life on three continents as
a United Nations diplomat. “From the food servers to the podiatrist who clips
his toe nails, none of them knew much about him,” she says. “Until they read
his story, they treated him like a checklist, you know, get him dressed, get
him shaved, get him fed. Each of these things is a check, but when you find
some form of commonality, it changes your whole relationship.”
For instance, two of his caregivers were Ethiopian and were fascinated to learn
that Graham Newton-Small had lived in Ethiopia for several years during his
career with the UN, and they wanted to hear all about his encounters with
emperor Haile Selassie. “They became his champions,” Jay Newton-Small says.
“They would sit with him for hours and ask him what it was like back then, and
even though my dad didn’t remember what happened last week or last month, he
still remembered what he had done in his twenties. He hardly spoke anymore but
asking him about these memories was the way to get him to speak.”
Newton-Small found the experience so transformative and so many families
approached her about doing the same for their family members that in 2017, she
founded MemoryWell, a platform that allows patients and their families to
create short life stories with the help of professional writers. The goal is to
enable caregivers to relate to their patients. Families can contribute by
uploading photos and memories. The initiative has received several noteworthy
awards, including the Not Impossible Healthcare Breakthrough Award in 2021."
Cheers,
*** Xanni ***
--
mailto:xanni@xanadu.net Andrew Pam
http://xanadu.com.au/ Chief Scientist, Xanadu
https://glasswings.com.au/ Partner, Glass Wings
https://sericyb.com.au/ Manager, Serious Cybernetics
