Stories from patients and families: an invitation to a co-productive partnership in healthcare service

Abstract

The writer1 describes the central importance of human relationships – in healthcare services, in our efforts to improve quality and safety within healthcare, and in society at large. The work of healthcare professionals, although action-focused and often technologically complex, always takes place in the context of human relationships. These relationships unfold in place and time. The ancient Greeks had two words for time – chronos and kairos. Chronos time is measured sequentially in minutes, hours, months and years. Kairos time, by contrast, is an indeterminate duration – a season, a period, a moment – in which something of significance occurs. A daughter standing at the bedside holding her dying mother's hand waits in kairos time for the transition that will usher in the next chapter of her adult life. The health professionals attending to the patient in bed 3 work – for the most part – with diligence and good intentions, day and night, in ordinary chronos time, clocking in and clocking out. Although patients and families and health professionals may meet in the same physical location in a room in the ICU, they are existing in two different kinds of time. Health professionals and patients and families …