The Impact of a Narrative Medicine Life Story Pilot Program on Press Ganey™ Scores in an Outpatient Cancer Center

ABSTRACT

Oncology patients face challenges beyond those directly affecting their cancer management. Guided personal narrative programs have been shown to help patients with chronic conditions and life-framing events. Few such narrative programs have been reported for cancer patients or analyzed for their impact on patient experience. We established our Life Story Narrative Program, modeled on the United States Veterans Affairs’ “My Life, My Story” for outpatient oncology patients in our hospital’s cancer center. Press Ganey™ patient experience scores from program participants were compared retrospectively with scores from patients who were not participants. Over an eight-month period, we invited 30 cancer center outpatients to participate. Twenty-seven individuals accepted, and 18 had their stories edited, approved, and scanned into their electronic health record. Cohort matching yielded a control arm consisting of 255 responses from 48 surveys, while the intervention arm consisted of 68 responses from 12 surveys. 78.4% of responses from the control arm were rated 5 compared with 100% in the intervention arm. The mean Press Ganey™ score response in the control arm was 4.71 compared with 5.00 from the intervention arm. Wilcoxon U value was 10,540 with p < .001. An outpatient narrative medicine program for cancer patients to tell their life stories can easily be organized. Patients were willing to participate, enrollment was brisk, and the use of resources was limited. Although our sample size was small, participation in our Life Story Narrative Pilot Program resulted in a statistically significant improvement in Press Ganey™ scores.

Acknowledgements

We gratefully acknowledge the contributions of the following individuals: Thor S. Ringler for his inspiring work and support; Karen Banoff, Diane Wooley, Danielle Calvano, Dr. Michael Palumbo, and Susan Fox for their administrative support; Dr. Faye Reiff-Pasarew for sharing her expertise in the medical humanities at hospital grand rounds; Rabbi Shira Milgrom for helping to introduce us to narrative medicine; and Peter Ginsburg, Harry Waizer and Ellen Mittelman for their time and enthusiasm. Finally, we sincerely thank everyone who shared their stories with us.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Data availability statement

Our local internal review board (IRB) did not feel this study met criteria for human research; therefore, they advised us that a formal IRB review for letter of exemption was not indicated or necessary. All statistical data analysis will be made available upon request.

Supplementary material

Supplemental data for this article can be accessed online at https://doi.org/10.1080/10410236.2023.2255761

Additional information

Funding

The author(s) reported there is no funding associated with the work featured in this article.