Mary Davis story progress - Erica - Sejin

Mary Davis story progress 

Mary Davis story progress

Inbox

Erica Womersley

10:29 AM (8 hours ago)

to me, Lynn

Dear Sejin,

Thank you so much for messaging me with an update yesterday, and good to know Mary 's daughter is working on the photos. I think I mentioned in my message back to you, to remind her to try and get as high a resolution photos as she can, as this will make it easier when you put them into the story.

I'm conscious it is getting on to three weeks since your last session with Mary and can't emphasise enough how important it is to push through at this stage and get the story finished. 

Patients lose momentum but also as time goes by we risk having them feel that we (the Life Story program) is not delivering.  Perhaps you could give her daughter a time frame of early next week to get some photos to you? With the weekend here it might be a good time for her to get them organised.  Neither Mary or her daughter need to decide where the pictures will go in the story  as you will be able to do that in the last stage of preparing it. 

How did you go with the editing of the last section? and have you begun layout of the story? Please do let me know if you want me to have a look at what you have done and comment. 

cheers

erica

--

Erica Womersley

Mobile: 0407668225

Dear Erica,

Thank you for your concern and advice about the progress of Mary's life story.

It seems that we have a different understanding of the state of the progress.

I have no reason to believe a loss of momentum on Mary's part that you are concerned about. I should know her since I am the one who has been communicating with her many weeks. I do not think Mary is the kind of person who would leave something unfinished, especially the life story on which we both spent many hours working together. I have full confidence that this project will be completed in a reasonable time frame. The three weeks that you talk about is about the period of special medical treatment.

I also do not believe that Mary or her family is potentially concerned that I (the Life Story program) am not delivering their expectation about the completion of the project. Although it is a theoretical possibility in generality, I think it is an inappropriate concern in the case of our relationship. My concern is more about not pressing the patient for more raid progress when the priority is on the medical side. 

It seems also that we have a different "preferred approach to the patient". Not everyone does the same way. As you noticed, I give more freedom to the patient and their input. This is my preferred approach.  Under the circumstance of the radiotherapy treatment she has been receiving, it is normal the life story can be made to wait. I do not see this as "loss of momentum". Mary is not staying home and she has to work through her daughter about choosing the photos. Daughter may not know exactly where the particular photo is located. She is also a working woman. Mary's daughter Linda said initially she will try to get all phots by Thursday. But she said she could not get them all, and said she will try to get them by this weekend. If she cannot again, I would not mind waiting. 

Actually, she sent me her edited version of the manuscript. But because she did not use the edit function, I cannot easily see where the changes are. Your editing was useful as a reference. For the sake of simplicity, I may accept most of the changes you suggest. I do not think formatting takes time. I believe I will get the pictures soon, and have the manuscript competed in one week or two which is still  within the ten weeks frame.

Regards,

Sejin

===

Erica Womersley

Attachments

4:50 PM (1 hour ago)

to Lynn, me

Dear Sejin,

Wells done on getting to this last step and it's a lovely job at recording her story with photos that really add to it. I've attached a document with comments up front and then page number changes to the use of  'And'. As I mention in the comments I think the use of adverbs in natural speech is a real issue to be aware of and when we are using AI to do the transcribing. Please remember you can keep what you feel works for the story and ignore the rest. 

I really appreciate the time it takes to do this work and thank you for your  dedication to Mary and her story.

The next step is to get together for a closure meeting and print her story so you can hand it over to her.

As it is your first completed story we will both do an evaluation as part of that closure meeting. i will forward you my evaluation prior to he meeting. Please bring the following with you to the closure meeting:

• ·         original consent form (white copy)
• 
  
• ·         timesheet.
• 
  
• ·         forms for handover, record of receipt/return of life story items
• 
  
• ·         kilometre reimbursement and expense claim form where relevant.
• 
  
• and
• 
  
• ·         USB with a WORD copy of the final story draft.
• 
  
• ·         Items requiring confidential disposal – these must be disposed of in the bin on site.

 Is it possible for you to meet me at Calvary for the Closure meeting on one of the following days or times? 

Friday 13th September

Tuesday 17th September? 

or Wednesday afternoon 18th September? 

I will be away from September 24th, so hopefully we can find a time that suits. 

Best wishes and thanks again for your work on the program

Erica

===

NEW STORY RECORDER RECORDER EVALUATION FORM

 

STORY RECORDER NAME:	Mary Davis	STORY NO: 732
MENTOR’S NAME:	Sejin Pak
DATE	12/9/24

 

 

When completed please email this document to your mentor.

 

VOLUNTEER RECORDER:

Please write a short reflection on your experience with this story.  Include any areas you found particularly rewarding or challenging, and what worked well or not so well.

Mary is my third life story patient. Like my first patient, Mary is very organised in her story telling, and tells her story almost non-stop for the whole hour. There is not much room for the story recorder to engage with patient in dialogue. This was not the case with my second patient who required the story recorder's cue to continue his story telling. In the case of the patient like Mary who talk non-stop in a fairly fast pace, the total amount of the transcribed amount of typewritten pages are about about 16 pages. This is very long, too long to read back to patient in the next meeting.  It would most likely take all of the one hour meeting, and there would be little or no time left for new story telling and recording. So, I raised this issue with my previous two mentors, and they agreed that in the case of such a long transcribed manuscript, the story recorder may send the transcribed manuscript ahead of the next meeting for the patient to make any change or correction. I followed this method, and made a brief discussion at the beginning of the the following session with the patient about the transcribed and corrected version. The patient would proceed with the next segment of story telling. In my opinion, this method worked well. In the case of patients who who are weaker in energy and less articulate, and are not in full control of the direction and flow of the story they are telling, the method of reading the story back to them, and interacting about the content of the story may be better. This is my current sense of what is a better method of getting the feedback from the patient on the transcribed material.   As for the method of transcription, I am currently using Microsoft Word Transcription which is a great help. I did not use this method in the case of the transcription of the recording with my first patient who also talked a lot non-stop as Mary did. In the case of this patient, the total length of transcription was nearly twenty pages, even longer than Mary's. Because I did not learn to use Microsoft Word transcription, it took nearly twenty hours each week. Even with Mircrosoft Word transcription, there are words that are not clear in sound or whose meaning or usage I am not sure about, so I need to look up for the likely correct ones. I estimate I take approximately 5-7 hours each week to produce the transcribed version. This is manageable to me.  Then, there is the issue of how much correction of the speech mode of sentence, the story recorder should make. About this matter, I am still in the learning mode, but in general, I have preference to respect and keep the sentence structure of the the story teller. I tend to believe that the story recorders may differ somewhat in preference in this matter. In the case, of Mary's story, I made some minimal changes, and Erica made a lot of changes. I accepted most of changes (several dozens) suggested by Erica, about removing "and", but I note that the same could also be applied to the use of "so". I did not remove them, but the total number of removable "so" are several dozens. I think how the patient sentences should be changed by the story recorder may be also be a matter of preference or style on the part of the story recorders. The same may be said about how much input the mentor has about changing (or suggesting change) of the patient's sentence, or what the story recorder has produced.  I note that three mentors I had differed in the level of change suggestions. I appreciate the time spent by Erica for extensive corrections the transcribed sentences. Some are are useful, but some I take as Erica's preference. I am in the process of learning about a variety of mentoring styles. The same can also be said about the approach to the patient. I believe there are a variety of approaches. In the case of Mary, knowing the patient, I believe there was no reason to worry about the loss of momentum, or concern about not completing in a reasonable time. Learning about the changes in the situation of medical treatment and also of unexpected moving of permanent accommodation, I understood Mary had many things to attend more important then the life story project.  I also had a reason to believe that Mary has a strong commitment of complete the life story. I did not think it was a good idea for me to press for the pictures. In fact, I had mentioned about the pictures several times before she began radiation therapies. She knew about the pictures all along, but there are good reasons why she could not supply them earlier. First, before the story telling sessions were ended, she did not know which ones, she wanted. Second, when she decided which ones, they were not all under her possession. She had to ask her brother about certain pictures. Third, she had to rely on her daughter for collecting the photos and scanning them to send to me. I was told to wait because the daughter was sick. For all of these reasons, which I could more or less guess from her circumstance, I felt it was inappropriate for me to press for a faster supply of the pictures.

What can we do to improve the support we give you as a volunteer, or to improve our systems and procedures?

I am still in the process of learning. But I think it would be good to accept that different people do things differently: there are a variety of preferences and styles among story recorders and mentors.

MENTOR:

What went really well?  What could be improved?

Sejin brings a very calm relaxed approach to the mentoring role. Through his communications with me as his mentor, he demonstrated openness and how he listened and observed  to get to know Mary and the context of her daily life ... and it was fun to read his authentic appreciation of her and the story recording role in his early communications “Forgot to mention that Mary did a lot of talking non stop.”   There was a point during the latter stage of completing the story where I was concerned that Sejin’s  generous willingness to rely on the timeliness of Mary and her daughter to provide photos and feedback in order to complete the story, may actually put completion of the story at risk. It is essential to start the process of getting photos at the very first meeting with patients.  As the story progresses, it may be even more important for story recorders to try and avoid delays in bringing together the recorded story with photos because the context of health and ability to engage with the process can change quickly and unexpectedly.   Sejin is a confident user of technology and skilfully used Word to document and edit the drafts. Sejin has used automatic transcribing and as this is a relatively new approach for the program, it was a an interesting opportunity to consider how this technology helps or hinders the transcription and documenting of story. Sejin will have valuable reflection on this, but my observation is that the direct transcription results in a text that reflects natural speech with many conjunctive adverbs such as ‘and’ ‘also’. Light editing to produce a readable text, requires removal of many of these.   Sejin returned drafts to me and effectively used tracking  and line marking to help him receive and locate useful feedback on the transcriptions. It is important to remember the patients and their families are not generally sent copies of the draft document and the responsibility for light editing sits with the story recorder and their mentor.  Providing the patient with the draft may seem to respect who ‘owns’ the story but also blurs just who is responsible for editing and finalising the story.   Given that English is not his first language it was important for me and Sejin to clarify meaning and try and avoid misunderstanding of language use. This makes phone conversations even more important than email communications and I encourage Sejin to extend email communications with a mentor, with a phone call.   One other reminder is regarding messaging the mentor when visiting patients in the community. This is an essential safety process, that must be followed.   I have found it interesting and satisfying to complete this story recording with Sejin and I look forward to discussing  our reflections on the process.

 

 

This information has been discussed and agreed at the closure meeting.  The following items will be actioned as a result of the discussion (e.g. sending a document, seeking clarification, etc.)

 

ACTION ITEMS:

What/When/Who?