f ‘Reconstructing Ourselves’ – An arts and research project improving patient experience

‘Reconstructing Ourselves’ was an eighteen-month arts project that brought together a visual artist, a storyteller and a qualitative researcher. The team worked with women undergoing complex breast reconstruction and facilitated them to tell their stories through video, textiles and photography as well as directly to their doctors through narrative recordings played during their consultations. This article focuses on the narrative recordings which were the subject of the research question: Can pre-recording what patients want to say before they go into the consultation room improve the patient experience of the consultation? The article describes the methodology and key thematic findings from twenty women who played their recorded narratives directly to their doctors. The response and feedback given by all participants in this study overwhelmingly confirmed that pre-recording what patients want to say, and playing it as part of the consultation, improved the patient experience of the consultation.