Professor Margaret McAllister – Narrative Competence in Healthcare

Healthcare is in the midst of transformation, with the increasing acknowledgement of the value of arts in promoting patients’ quality of life, relaxation and stimulation. Clinical students as healthcare leaders of tomorrow benefit from arts-based learning and skill development.

Narrative competence is the ability to listen and share life-enhancing stories and involves three interrelated skills: intentional dialogue; being conscious of the self-in-relation; and creating client ease. Story-sharing has therapeutic benefits, including building trust and open communication, facilitating understanding of clients’ unique health issues and goals, and motivating clients to find meaning, motivation, and satisfaction with healthcare.

In our innovative Narrative Competence project, we taught students how to deeply listen to peoples’ stories, and generate a short biographical narrative from them to share with the person’s community. This workshop will share our approach and findings, discussing ideas for how the intervention can be scaled up so that there is national impact.

Participants will gain an understanding of how well-developed Narrative Competence develops skills and capabilities in empathic engagement, communication, cultural competence and collaborative goal setting, improves therapeutic outcomes for clients including safety and quality of life, and produces work satisfaction and wellbeing in clinicians.

About Professor Margaret McAllister:

Professor Margaret McAllister RN, Ed D , Professor of Nursing at Central Queensland University, is an experienced educator, and mental health nurse. She is an expert in narrative competence research, mental health and education. She is widely published and some of her books that you may find interesting are: ‘Solution focused nursing’ and ‘The resilient nurse’.

| May 10th, 2019 | Posted in Uncategorized |

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