Services
Company
Legal and Governance
Insights / Articles
The Science Behind Patient Stories
Written by Alexandra Dubois and Dr Sumira Riaz on Tuesday, July 23, 2024
Using a behavioral science approach to patient storytelling can guide interventions and improve outcomes
The best strategies for targeting interventions and improving patient outcomes might not come from reading charts and lab reports; they might come from listening to patient stories.
“You have to honor the lived experience as a form of expertise,” says Alexandra Dubois, Senior Vice President of Patient Engagement for OPEN Health. “We oftentimes look at (key opinion leaders and healthcare providers) as being the best source of information…but it’s also important to overlay the patient perspective; these stories are super emotional, so they are going to be remembered, and they are going to make a difference.”
Storytelling is a powerful patient communication tool. When patients share their lived experiences, it bridges the gap with their families, communities, clinicians and health systems, and contributes to patient-centered healthcare. Delving deeper into patient narratives not only can offer significant insights into their journeys but can improve patient satisfaction and outcomes.
“Everyone is going to understand and connect with a patient story,” says Dubois. “It’s how stories are told that makes the biggest difference.”
The Science of Storytelling
Telling the stories of the people behind the numbers helps patients better understand their diagnoses, feel less isolated and share their lived experiences with their families, caregivers and healthcare providers. In turn, stories can offer messages of perseverance and hope and drive behavior change.
Studies have shown that we’re more likely to remember stories than facts, perhaps because storytelling engages multiple regions of the brain, releases a jolt of dopamine and increases the likelihood that we’ll remember details and understand concepts. Stories also address our human desire to connect with others who are experiencing similar life challenges.
Understanding the science of storytelling can help medical affairs professionals, patient engagement, market access, and health economics and outcomes researchers (HEOR) craft more compelling narratives that generate meaningful, actionable insights, says Dr. Sumira Riaz, Health Psychologist and Senior Vice President of Patient Engagement at OPEN Health.
“Stories can have power, but we need to go a little deeper,” she explains. “It’s about how to capture these stories to make sense from an interventional perspective and, through behavioral science, to be able to take those narratives—the linguistics, the language, the words, the phrases people use—and make sense of the interpretation, therefore delivering the right support.”
By approaching storytelling through the lens of behavioral science, pharmaceutical companies can bridge knowledge gaps, decrease cognitive resistance, address health inequities and improve outcomes. Using psychological models to frame and analyze storytelling insights and focusing on the untold interpretations of stories and the hidden narratives also makes it possible to formulate what can be done to improve the patient experience, Riaz adds.
Crafting Compelling Stories
The most compelling patient stories include personal, memorable details that follow a specific structure with a hook in the introduction, explanation of an obstacle, treatment impact and words of hope or inspiration. Stories should be meaningful, engaging, measurable and embedded in behavioral science techniques to spark behavior change.
“While heterogeneity is common in many disease states, there are some very basic similarities in how people are thinking and their struggles,” Dubois says. “If they hear stories about others going through something similar, it gives them hope and inspiration…and they can see a path forward with their condition.”
OPEN Health takes a patient-centric approach to storytelling that’s deeply rooted in behavioral science, with the goal of delivering patient communication and creative storytelling solutions across the product lifecycle. Stories are shared in virtual programs and webinars as well as on websites and social media. These include personal reflection, quotes and photos in brochures and other collateral materials.
Riaz credits the team of health psychologists for their success in mapping stories onto a behavioral framework to create patient-centric, insight-driven and actionable solutions that guide interventions and improve overall patient outcomes. It’s an approach that she has seen positively change mindsets and perceptions when insights into the power of combining behavioral science and storytelling are presented at meetings, conferences and product theaters.
“There’s always a place for stories,” says Dubois. “Patient marketers and patient advocacy groups have known this for a long time…and it’s important to make sure that cross functionally, every team knows how the patient voice can positively impact the work that they do.”
Working in partnership with our clients, we embrace our different perspectives and strengths to deliver fresh thinking and solutions that make a difference.
Together we can unlock possibilities.
For information about OPEN Health’s services and how we could support you, please get in touch.