The technique of story-telling in thyroid diseases including surgery; useful or not

In the modern day busy clinical practice, the communication between patient/relative and caregiver is at a minimal level. The patients and relatives feel apprehensive when advised about surgical/interventional treatment. Storytelling is such a technique of health communication made in common man language and can operate in a virtual environment. This study aims to unveil the efficacy of storytelling technique on patients undergoing Hemithyroidectomy for benign cytology.

A story of a lady (cartoon version), aged 25 years, with a benign solitary thyroid nodule (STN), who underwent uneventful hemithyroidectomy was depicted in this movie including the history, clinical examination, investigations, counseling, and the operative procedure, and the running time of the animation movie is 4 min. For developing this movie, high-end graphic work station and various multimedia authoring tools like Adobe Flash, Photoshop, Captivate, Maya and Final Cut Pro, were used. The story was shown to patients with clinical STN who were provisional candidates for surgery. The patients filled in the evaluation of multimedia animation questionnaire at the time of discharge.

60 patients participated in the study. One form was disqualified due to incomplete filling. Mean age was 35.45 ± 12.8 years.55 (91.6%) were females. All patients were euthyroid. The mean weight of thyroid nodule was 40.80 ± 20.79 g. The final histopathology was colloid in the majority. All participants found the movie useful. In the questionnaire, the mean score for improved understanding of the disease was 73.9 ± 14.7, better organization of treatment was 78.6 ± 13.1 stimulated interest in the relatives was 70.8 ± 15.8 and saved unnecessary discussion with the consultant was 55.5 ± 7.8.

Story telling is a useful tool in health communication. With the widespread availability of high-speed internet and affordable mobile computing devices, story telling can be a useful tool to patients and relatives in decision making and in addition, saves valuable time of the treating consultant.