Medical staff from Cardiff University launched a healthcare educational podcast to explore the human stories and perspectives of illness.
The nursing team from Cardiff University launched its first educational podcast on Monday, encouraging people to face difficulties bravely and focusing on human experience rather than statistics.
The podcast is named Behind the Health Statistic, since it aims to take audiences’ attention away from numbers to vivid people by sharing hidden stores and perspectives of health and illness.
“When we listen to the news when they say x amount of people died or are going to this, it’s like they’re just a statistic. But we know that each one of those numbers is a person with life, with family, with a good job,” says Ricky Hellyal, the leader of this podcast.
“They are not easy to listen to, sometimes they may upset you. But one ring of this podcast is to help people realize that there are humans behind numbers, there are human stories behind numbers.”
“We want to focus on some private conditions to encourage people to seek help with professionals,” said Ricky Hellyal. “They’re not taboo to talk about hidden stories and no need for shame.”
The first series narrated by academics comprises 10 episodes, covering anorexia, psoriasis, and schizophrenia, to epilepsy and cancer.
It was an educational tool for undergraduate nursing students, to avoid them being stuck by the computer all day in the beginning. But with the project development, the team realized it is also valuable for the public.
“We often find that students gain a lot from listening to actual people,” says Ricky Hellyar. “It is worth more than listening to a lecture you teach them. Engaging with people, listening to people, actually being to a live experience of something is such an important and valuable tool.”
It has been downloaded over 150 times in four days since the release, which makes it into the top 25% podcast.
The next series will include men in nursing, women’s health- particularly endometriosis, and learning disability, scheduled to come in summer 2021.