My Life, My Story

Abstract

Contemporary healthcare institutions strive to provide humanistic and patient-centered healthcare. To reach this goal, healthcare systems must first look to the patient as a person, before treating a specific malady or pathology. This chapter will illustrate a humanistic approach to the provision of healthcare using the case of the My Life, My Story program in the United States Veterans Health Administration. My Life, My Story is a patient-centered, life story work intervention where learners complete a life story interview with a veteran using standardized prompts from the My Life, My Story protocol. This chapter will describe the My Life My Story program at the VA Boston Healthcare System, the steps and rationale in program development and discussion of impact on the learners, the patients, and humanizing the healthcare system.