Mrs Imelda Gilmore1
1UTS IMPACCT, PaCCST, Helensburgh, Australia
Biography:
Imelda Gilmore is a former family carer who supported her husband for nine years, from his diagnosis with younger onset Alzheimer’s Disease until his death in 2016. She is an experienced communicator, advocate, speaker and campaigner in dementia care, working to promote the advancement of knowledge, care and services in palliative care for people with dementia and their family carers.
Imelda is a founding member of the IMPACCT Centre Consumer Advisory Group at UTS. She has contributed as a consumer on a large number of projects. She continues to serve IMPACCT, PaCCSC, SPHERE and CHERE.
Abstract:
The palliative care ward or care bed or home space is first and foremost an intense hub of human experiences and emotions. By pointing to the art of storytelling, the author has been able to touch on an aspect of clinical care which is sometimes necessarily more difficult to express or measure. The author’s husband died as a result of younger onset Alzheimer’s Disease; during his months of palliative care in a residential aged care facility, she was able to learn and grasp hold of the deeper issues which are intrinsic to relationships at this stage in the life of a person who is approaching the end of their life. This resulted in her writing down pieces of the story in allegories which she hoped would contribute to both her husband’s care and also the palliative care journey of others.
At its most ultimately raw, basic level, the best in palliative care involves the whole person and, necessarily, the relationships that make up that person as a whole human being, including spiritual relationships, along with the main people who surround that person in relationship.
Storytelling can be a powerful tool for clinicians to touch in their work as a team with the patient and their family; the author will attempt through example to elaborate on how clinicians can better hear these stories in real time and how they can use these stories to enact change in their nursing practice. There are many stories and, of course, these are both positive and negative; regardless of the nature of the stories, they can be a very powerful way for the clinical team to reflect and learn: the key to enabling the story to positively influence the clinician’s care is simply to learn to be alert to listen for the story.