Catch up with Dr. Becky McCall after she defends her PhD and unpack what it takes to research digital storytelling inside a biomedical topic like antimicrobial resistance. We also get real about what stories can and cannot do on their own, then zoom out to targeting, dissemination, and new projects that translate stories into health system change.

Episode Key Messages

• finishing a seven-year PhD and surviving the defense
• using digital storytelling to engage antimicrobial resistance and antibiotic resistance
• defending an arts-based method through a behavioural science lens
• building projects beyond Storybug, including care home storytelling
• “digital fragmentation” and why incomplete records affect antibiotic decisions
• targeting stories through narrative framing and audience investment
• planning with partners, storytellers, organizations, and funders
• what Becky wishes she had known at the start of her PhD
• recruiting storytellers through trust and patient organizations
• the Common Language Story Slam as a model for shared viewing and discussion

Other Links Mentioned

• Read this episode's blog post
• Check out the Storybug website
• Listen to Becky's original Co-Created episode

Other Epsiodes Mentioned

• Ep 6 with Melody Williamson
• Ep 32 with Mike Wilson of Loughborough University
• Ep 48 with Dr. Will Bynum of the Shame Lab

About Our Guest

Dr. Becky McCall is based in London, UK, and has recently completed her first set of five digital stories that focus on people with experiences of antibiotic resistant infection. The work forms part of Becky’s PhD research (University College London) and aims to help address a gap in public engagement with one of the world’s top 10 humanitarian health crises (antimicrobial resistance-AMR). Becky is also a medical journalist writing for both medical and consumer press, recently including Foresight Global Health, Medscape.com, The Lancet, The Times and the Mail on Sunday. She has also worked in radio and TV. She'll make any excuse to travel; seeking inspiration in places and most importantly, people - firmly believing everyone has a story to tell. Connect with Becky McCall here.

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Fear of childbirth does not always look like panic. Sometimes it shows up as silence, stoicism, anger, or a private sense that you have lost control of your own body and your own story. We sit down with nurse, midwife, and researcher Jonathan Dominguez Hernandez to talk about how digital storytelling in healthcare can help people make meaning from vulnerable moments, and why the process needs strong ethics when trauma is close to the surface. We break down his meta-synthesis findings and why narrative, ethics, and facilitation style can determine whether storytelling becomes support, advocacy, or too much.

Episode Key Messages

• Jonathan’s path from pediatric nursing to midwifery and public health research

• What it is like being a male midwife across countries and workplace cultures

• How digital storytelling training shaped Jonathan’s research direction

• Why he shifted from group workshops to one on one online storytelling

• Ethics, consent, ownership, and when stories can or cannot be shared

• How the meta-synthesis was built from qualitative studies and assessed for confidence

• Four key themes: re-authoring lived experience, processing emotions, ripple effects of empathy, gaining agency

• Trauma informed facilitation and the role of distress protocols

• What research misses when it ignores the narratives people borrow and retell

• How salutogenesis and sense of coherence guide narrative analysis in fear of childbirth

Other Links Mentioned

• Read this episode's blog post
• Read Jonathan's meta-synthesis from Frontiers in Digital Health
• Learn more about Jonathan's work

About Our Guest

​​Jonathan Dominguez Hernandez is a researcher, educator, and midwife specialising in public health, Evidence-Based practice, and qualitative health research. He currently works as a researcher and lecturer at the Zurich University of Applied Sciences, where his work focuses on sex- and gender-sensitive healthcare, perinatal mental health, and inclusive approaches to care. With a background that combines clinical practice, public health, law, and education, Jonathan has worked across the UK, Austria, Switzerland, and Spain in both frontline maternity care and academic leadership roles. His research explores how narratives and digital storytelling can support health and wellbeing, and he is particularly interested in translating research into practical, compassionate, and Evidence-Based guidelines for clinical practice. Alongside teaching and research, he contributes to international guideline development and interdisciplinary projects aimed at improving maternal and perinatal health outcomes. Jonathan is currently completing a PhD in Public Health at Lancaster University, focusing on dialogical narrative analysis and health-promoting storytelling in women’s reproductive health.

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One gesture can keep a patient in care. That’s the charge running through our conversation with Jack Bones, a transgender cancer survivor whose digital story takes us from a tense biopsy room to a stage where an audience of clinicians wiped away tears and leaned into hard, necessary dialogue. We walk through how a politicized identity collided with late-stage Hodgkin’s lymphoma, how bias nearly closed a door, and how a single act of compassion reopened it.

Episode Key Messages

• the craft of digital storytelling as patient advocacy

• bias in clinical encounters and its real-world risks

• the technician’s gesture that restored safety and trust

• workshop process from script to screening

• reactions at the BC Cancer Summit and productive dialogue

• reaching missing audiences in shame and stigma work

• plans to use film and allegory for future stories

• the ocean moment as a metaphor for freedom

• how stories support training, orientation and culture change

Other Links Mentioned

• Read this episode's blog post
• Watch Jack's digital story
• Jack created their digital story in a BC Cancer workshop facilitated by Krystle Schofield
• Check out Jack's work, Brassthorn Art

About Our Guest

Jackdaw Bones describes them self as an "eremite" and occasionally ventures out of their home in the woods to show the shiny things they've made, in true covid style.

They've been a practising artist ever since their youth, using the lenses of cameras and inks to explore ideas of self, relationships to the natural world, and the terror/joy of living.

Jack is a dropout from an art school that has since disappeared to make way for training industrial workers, though they consider their experiences with disastrous experiments over the years their most valuable teacher. They revel in the beautiful chaos of learning from other artists, from books, other artists, and fucking up. The process is where the joy lay for them, and indeed that joy is built into the foundation of every piece they make.

They are disabled, and a cancer survivor. They have worked hard over the years to get to the level where they can produce art without sacrificing their health, so while their pieces may not be perfect, the imperfection belies the passion, determination, joy, and gratitude they feel when practising.

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