Potilastarinaan

Potilastarinaan is the illative singular form of potilastarina, a compound of potilas (patient) and tarina (story). As a linguistic term, potilastarinaan denotes movement toward or into the patient narrative and is used in Finnish to describe materials, data, or actions that relate to patient stories.

In health care and research, potilastarinat refer to narratives produced by patients about their illness, symptoms, treatment experiences, daily life and care encounters. Potilastarinaan is used to describe the process or product of engaging with patient narratives, such as collecting potilastarinaan data, analyzing potilastarinaan insights, or incorporating these narratives into care design and evaluation.

The use of patient narratives aims to complement quantitative measures by capturing subjective experiences, values and priorities, and to improve patient-centered care, communication and service development. Narrative methods include interviews, writing prompts and storytelling groups, with attention to ethical considerations such as informed consent, privacy and anonymization. Researchers and clinicians must handle sensitive information carefully and minimize risk of harm to participants.

Strengths and limitations: patient narratives can reveal lived experiences, preferences and barriers that are not visible in numerical data, but they are subjective and not necessarily generalizable. Rigorous qualitative methods and transparent interpretation are important for credible use of potilastarinaan data in decision making.

See also: potilas, tarina, potilaskokemus, narratiivinen lääketiede, patient-centered care.