Marketers will tell you that word of mouth is the best form of advertising, particularly when social media are brought into play. Kelly Grindrod, Assistant Professor at University of Waterloo’s School of Pharmacy in Waterloo, Ontario, is leveraging that maxim into a change management strategy that will tell the story of pharmacy’s transformation into a provider of patient-centred care.

Grindrod will use funding from the Wellspring Award to participate in workshops for narrative medicine at Columbia University’s Faculty of Medicine, New York, and multi-media storytelling at the Centre for Digital Storytelling in Berkeley, California. She will share her learnings with pharmacy students and in research papers, as well as create a website for pharmacists and patients to share their experiences.

“Research tells us that many pharmacists feel they are too busy, too tired, too alone and too invisible to change. And while the leaders of the profession have drawn maps to a bright and important future, change management theory tells us the road ahead is precarious and complex,” wrote Grindrod in her Wellspring application. She describes storytelling “as a form of advocacy for practice change,” adding that there is growing interest in “using story to translate research knowledge into practice and even some evidence supporting its use in the clinical management of illnesses.”