I had the pleasure of taking a phone call the other day from someone who works for an organisation thats uses digital voice recorders in their day to day business life. Nothing remarkable about that, there are a huge number of businesses that do the same this one however caught my attention. It was a call from Eastern Palliative Care who are located in Victoria, Australia and their service is one that I thought needed some recognition and support.
I don’t know much about nursing or the health system, I am rarely at my doctors and the closest I come to anything medical is on a Saturday night when Greys Anatomy is on the TV. Recently though I was briefly exposed to Palliative care and the remarkable people who work in this area of nursing as a very close relative passed away from cancer. Palliative care is given to terminally ill patients to help relieve and prevent their suffering in their last days or weeks. Not a subject most like to discuss but all of us are affected at some point in time.
One of the many services provided by Eastern Palliative Care is called a client biography. This service allows the patient to tell their life story in their own words all of which are recorded on a digital voice recorder. A trained volunteer biographer records the interviews which is later transcribed and given to the family of the patient. The patient often gets great satisfaction from talking about their life, their adventures, maybe some family secrets and often tributes to relatives and friends.
For me and my family we did not have enough time to record our close relative’s thoughts and stories as they passed away too quickly, we did have a voice recorder on hand however we never got the chance to use it. Recording a voice we could have treasured for years to come.
We help to support Eastern Palliative care with free recording and transcription advice as well as at cost Olympus digital voice recorders. Great work Eastern and others like you.
The voice recorders we have suggested and have provided to Eastern Palliative are the Olympus WS series digital voice recorders. We have already shipped some WS-750M recorders and hope to supply some of the newer WS-812 recorders when they are released in Australia March/April 2012.