News

Krystal Wallis, Program Development and Volunteer Services Manager from Eastern Palliative Care in Victoria has written an article for CareSearch’s “Palliative Perspectives” about their award-winning volunteer biography service.

“At 38 years of age, I was busy with a thriving career, marriage and 3 young children. An advanced breast cancer diagnosis at 39 changed all of that. Suddenly it was imperative that my children remember me and that they know how much I love them. Enter Eastern Palliative Care (EPC)….

“The task is enormous, and I quite literally would never have found the energy or know-how to do this on my own. We have created a beautiful piece of written art for myself and my family … a priceless gift”, (Kristy—EPC client)

In 2005 EPC commenced the process of initiating a volunteer-based client biography service. At the time it was a new method of therapeutic intervention in Australia. Storytelling has always been a universal powerful tool used to maintain one’s heritage, to hand over important traditions and rituals and to convey lessons to be learnt. It is a means of passing on what matters.

A high number of our clients choose to revisit painful memories or share secrets with their biographers that they never want recorded in the story. Comments such as ‘I don’t want this written in, but I just needed to tell someone’ are commonplace. There is safety for our clients in engaging in honest conversation with their biographers and all of this can contribute to a more peaceful death on behalf of the client.

Engaging in the process also allows the client to place the current medicalised experience of a palliative illness back into the broader context of their life – to understand their current ‘care recipient’ role is not what ultimately defines them. It allows each client to reconnect with the essence of who they are and remember they are larger than their diagnosis. EPC clients report a rise in a sense of wellbeing and a decrease in levels of depression, anxiety, breathlessness, and pain as a result of the biography intervention.

Since the commencement of the program there are now close to 100 volunteer biographers working with Eastern Palliative Care and, as of November 2023, over 1,596 biographies have been published.

Continue reading the full article in “Palliative Perspectives” here.