AMI Storytelling Reference Guide

Use this guide alongside Tool 4 Gathering Stories and Understanding Results and Tool 3 Building Your Impact Story. It explains how to gather and compare accounts, check interpretations and report outcomes over time.

Use this section when you need help completing the working pages. Agree one shared collection request across program, measurement, local and communications teams. Set a realistic reporting schedule and discuss staff time, translation, travel and other collection costs with partners.

Pharmacy and supply staff can explain product availability; providers and service managers can explain care arrangements; patients and caregivers can describe their own experience. Include people across the conditions relevant to your question, including those facing barriers. Record the selection approach and missing perspectives. A small group can provide useful insight when you clearly describe whose experience it covers.

A routine check-in can answer a focused question. Individual interviews allow depth and privacy. Open survey questions gather comparable accounts from several settings. Observation and program records help establish context. Group discussions explore shared experiences and differences; consider whether differences in authority or care relationships could affect candor, and offer individual follow-up.

Explain the purpose, use and limits of group privacy. Agree respectful participation. A facilitator can guide the core questions while a note-taker records examples, differences and whose views they reflect. Invite each person to contribute, explore contrasting experiences and summarize what you heard for checking. Keep individual and shared views distinct.

Explain topics, time, audience, storage and use before collection. Confirm that declining, stopping or skipping a question preserves access to care and support. Offer choices about setting and interviewer where possible. Record separate permissions for participation, recording and identifiable quotations or images. Explain withdrawal options and practical limits after distribution; reconfirm permission for a changed use.

Follow local and organizational safeguarding and consent procedures, including guardian consent and child assent as applicable. Be attentive to distress, stigma and power relationships. Use an interviewer and setting that support candid responses. For sensitive or formal research, use the appropriate review process.

Show people’s expertise, aspirations and agency. Keep their meaning and voice intact, check translations, and offer review of their representation. Credit local leadership and the partners who helped shape the result. Return findings and finished stories in an accessible form. Protect identities through secure storage, restricted permissions records and attention to clues such as location, role, diagnosis or image.

Use images to document the setting, service, equipment or supply conditions relevant to the result. Keep the date, place, photographer, accurate caption and allowed uses. A quotation should add a specific experience or explanation. Keep consent, confidentiality and participant review attached to the material as it moves between teams. Follow organizational retention and deletion arrangements.

Read each full account before selecting extracts. Choose a few topics tied to your question, such as product fit, supply timing, refill arrangements, service volume or access barriers. Give each topic a short definition. Mark the relevant passages and add topics that emerge. This sorting is often called coding. Ask a second reviewer to examine a selection and discuss differences.

Compare accounts within each site first, then across sites, roles and periods where appropriate. Include accounts that challenge the first explanation. Record “unasked” or “unknown” separately from an account of no change. Preserve source IDs so each finding can be traced to the full notes.

“Six of eight patients interviewed described fewer extra trips” identifies the group and the pattern. Explain how those eight were chosen. Use counts only when responses were gathered and recorded consistently. In group discussions, describe views expressed and important disagreement; count individual responses when each person was asked separately. A repeated quotation keeps its original source ID.

Compare the accounts with the outcome result and relevant records. Ask what supports the proposed contribution and what other explanation could fit. An assumption is something your conclusion relies on being true. For each important assumption, record checked, partly checked or still to test, the supporting source and the next check.

Review the interpretation with local partners, record corrections and retain meaningful disagreement. Use the finding for local planning as well as reporting. Agree the next program or measurement action and the support required.

All program details, numbers, accounts and reporting language in these examples are invented. Use the approved metric card for your calculation and the counting unit agreed with partners.

A clinic reviews one priority diabetes medicine over 24 months. Complete stock records establish nine stockout-free months out of 12 in Year 1 and 11 out of 12 in Year 2: 75% and approximately 92%. Each month uses the same stockout definition, and records cover the full month. The result describes improved product availability over time.

The team interviews the pharmacist and two nurses involved in refills. All three describe earlier reordering; the pharmacist also describes purchased stock covering delivery gaps. Monthly stock, donation receipt and procurement records support these accounts. Donation supply, local purchasing and planning all belong in the explanation.

The team also invites eight patients with direct experience across both years, deliberately including people who experienced a stockout. Six describe fewer extra trips to obtain the medicine; two describe continued travel difficulties. The team records permissions and source notes and sorts the accounts under supply timing, refill arrangements and travel. These eight patients provide a range of experiences rather than a population estimate.

The pharmacy lead confirms the comparison and purchased supply. Staff accounts support the explanation that coordination helped; patient accounts add experience of obtaining medicines. The two accounts of travel difficulty show a remaining barrier. The story describes improvement in product availability and explains the care experience within the people consulted.

The pharmacy lead and partner program manager agree who will review delivery timing, stock coverage and patient feedback and when. They identify the resources needed to keep records current and consider how supply and service arrangements could better support the intended outcome.

Outcome: the share of locally recorded demand for one defined priority medicine met through donated supply received by the clinic rose from 60% in Year 1 to 80% in Year 2. Demand was 10,000 units and then 12,000; receipt was 6,000 and then 9,600 units. The same product, unit and annual periods are used. Demand grew 20%, while the share met increased by 20 percentage points. The gap through this supply fell from 4,000 to 2,400 units.

Gather and check: pharmacy and prescribing staff describe revised quantities and delivery timing. Compare request, receipt, prescribing and purchase records to check the explanation and how the remaining gap was managed. If the story concerns patients obtaining medicines, include their accounts or relevant service records.

Outcome: a facility delivered 2,400 defined diagnostic tests in Year 1 and 3,000 in Year 2, a 25% increase in service volume. Partners use the same test definition, counting method and annual periods. Service registers establish tests delivered. Unique patients are counted separately, since one person may receive more than one test.

Gather and check: speak with the service manager, technician and referring providers, and include people facing access barriers. Compare service registers with accounts of how donated equipment, consumables, staffing, maintenance and referral patterns influenced the volume delivered. Check for changes in reporting or demand that may also explain the increase.

The settings draw on public member descriptions; every example result and account is fictional. The older storytelling resource informed partner planning, proportionate requests, resourcing, recognition and ethics. The guidance uses AMI’s three current shared areas and also supports organization-specific outcomes.