Nurstory: Incredible Experiences of Digital Storytelling

By Dr. Kristen Jones-Bonofiglio, PhD, RN
AMS Fellow/Assistant Professor, School of Nursing/Director, Centre for Health Care Ethics, Lakehead University

Special thanks to Rani Sanderson, Hisayo Horie, Daniel Weinshenker. Raeann LeBlanc, and Sue Hagedorn

Editor’s Note: For the past ten years StoryCenter has been a key partner in the Nurstory initiative, which brings nurses and nursing students together to share stories about their work and reflect on how caring for others impacts them. One of our recent collaborators on Nurstory is Dr. Kristen Jones-Bonofiglio, AMS Fellow, Assistant Professor, and Director of the Centre for Health Care Ethics at Lakehead University. In this piece, she shares her views on the power of story for nursing education and practice.

I am a nurse educator and researcher at Lakehead University in Thunder Bay, Ontario, Canada. I was first introduced to digital storytelling as a participant in a three-day workshop in 2017. I didn’t even know what I had signed up for. I registered because I knew some people who were attending, the timing worked with my availability, and it sounded good, based on the few details I had gathered. Closer to the workshop, I gradually became quite nervous. I don’t consider myself to be particularly technologically savvy. With doubts, I attended the first day of the workshop, and as I settled in, I began to enjoy the process of sharing stories and working together with the group members and facilitator. But, after the first day, I admit I did feel my anxiety building again. How could I possibly produce a video by the end of the workshop? Would I be the only one without a video to show?

Let me tell you, I worried for nothing. As if by magic, by day three of the workshop, I created a digital story about resilience. Then, at the end of the workshop, a screening of all the group members’ videos occurred. It was breathtaking. What an experience!  I immediately knew I wanted to do it again‚—someday.

The next year, I was able to see the process of digital storytelling from the outside looking in. One of my mentors, Nancy Angus, designed a digital storytelling project with seniors, called the GIANTs (Grand Individuals Aging with Neighbours in Thunder Bay) project. This workshop offered seniors a chance to create videos about what it means to live well in their community. Unfortunately, the timing didn’t work with my schedule for me to be part of the project or to help with the actual workshop, but I heard play-by-play accounts from others. One of the workshop participants was 98 years old! The best part of this project was that at the end, Nancy rented a theatre to showcase the videos in the community. The house was packed, and the GIANTs sat in the front row and experienced their videos on the big screen with an audience. This was another incredible experience for me, as I sat way at the back of the theatre taking it all in. Again, I knew I need to do this again—someday.

That same year, I applied for an AMS Phoenix Fellowship, and was successful. In the fellowship, I had a mentor, Dr. Michelle Spadoni, and a funded plan for research on compassion in nursing. My research had three phases, with the final phase being a digital story workshop with nurse educators on compassion in nursing. I worked on the plans for the workshop with my mentor Michelle, StoryCentre Canada (Rani), and NurStory (Daniel, Raeann, and Sue), to make it happen.

Eventually, when everything was organized for the workshop, nine nurses were brave enough to attend. They agreed to come because I asked them to, and because they trusted me. They all told me on the first day that they were nervous and had considered backing out. I remembered that feeling, and I told them so. I promised them that it would be ok—to just stay and be part of the process.

On the first day of my workshop, I was asked by the facilitators if I were making a story. That was something I hadn’t considered. I was the organizer, after all. Surely, I couldn’t also make a story. I actually didn’t want to. What if it was not good? But I felt nine sets of nurse colleagues’ eyeballs on me. If they were going to do it, so was I.

I was able to create my story and also help others throughout the three days of the workshop. This was another incredible experience for me. I regularly told the facilitators, Rani and Hisayo, that they have the best jobs in the world! I was so eager for the premier of the stories at the end of the third day. I knew the participants didn’t know what awaited them, but I did! My mentor, Michelle, had the foresight to get little bags of popcorn and candy for everyone. As a group we “went to the movies” in the classroom where the workshop was held. We watched 10 digital stories of compassion in nursing. Each so different. Each perfect and beautiful.

I titled my story, “Radical Compassion.” It is a story that I felt I needed to tell. As a nurse educator, my world is not readily understood by the public or even among nurses. It is isolating sometimes. There are hard decisions to make that affect people’s lives. Sure, I don’t work in an Intensive Care Unit (ICU), but my work matters, and it does make a difference. I contribute to the quality of care that happens in many health care settings because I help to form new graduate nurses at the bedside, in the clinic, the public health unit, or in long term care facilities.

Feedback from the nine participants overwhelmed me. The digital storytelling experience was profoundly meaningful to each one of them, and it helped them reconnect to the core aspects of their nursing practice, and why nursing means so much to them.

The next step for this research is a “world premier” movie night being held on May 8 in Thunder Bay, during National Nurses Week. I have invited high school students who want to be nurses, nursing students, nurses from all sectors of health care, and retired nurses. I can just imagine the energy of a nursing community of practice, all gathered to watch digital stories of compassion in nursing—many generations together. A reception will follow, and I can already hear the hum of chatter and bursts of laughter. Connections and reconnections. For this blog, this paragraph is the ending, but I know that my work with digital storytelling is only beginning.

Learn how to write and create your own story as a short video in a StoryCenter Digital Storytelling Workshop, and stay up to date with StoryCenter news and workshop opportunities: sign up now for our mailing list.