Keynote: Listening Beyond Speech: Communication, Narrative and Person-Centred Care

Keynote: Listening Beyond Speech: Communication, Narrative and Person-Centred Care Har passerat

Tisdag 5 maj 2026 14:00 - 14:30 G3

Key-note speaker: Juan Bornman
Moderatorer: Inger Ekman, Axel Wolf

Spår: Keynotes.

Person-centred care is commonly articulated through three interrelated tenets: initiating the partnership through the patient’s narrative; working the partnership through shared decision-making; and safeguarding the partnership through documentation that ensures continuity of care. Central to all three is the assumption that patients can readily articulate their experiences, values, and goals. For many individuals – including persons with communication disabilities, children, and those navigating linguistic, cultural, or power asymmetries – this assumption does not hold. Drawing on research in augmentative and alternative communication (AAC), and informed by perspectives from the global South, this keynote argues that access to narrative is not a given but a communicative right that must be actively enabled. In many African contexts, where oral storytelling traditions remain strong, narrative is foundational to identity, meaning-making, and relational care – yet is often marginalised within biomedical systems. Using examples from health and rehabilitation contexts, the presentation illustrates how AAC principles can be used to elicit and co-construct patient narratives following stroke, in paediatric care, and in multilingual settings where shared language is absent. The keynote further demonstrates how AAC-informed practices support equitable partnerships and shared decision-making, and how documentation of narratives and preferences can safeguard continuity of care across settings. Ultimately, the presentation reframes person-centred care as unattainable without deliberate, culturally responsive communication access.

Språk

English

Konferens

GCPCC

Föreläsare

Juan Bornman Key-note speaker

Juan Bornman is Professor of Augmentative and Alternative Communication (AAC) at Stellenbosch University and a speech-language therapist and audiologist.
Her research spans more than three decades and is grounded in a rights-based commitment to communication as a fundamental human need and human right. Central to her scholarship is the ethical and methodological imperative to elicit the perspectives, lived experiences, and narratives of children and adults with severe communication disabilities themselves, as a cornerstone of person-centred care. Her work advances the use of AAC to enable meaningful participation across education, health, and criminal justice contexts, particularly in the global South.
Through academic publications and applied research, she challenges exclusionary practices that silence individuals with communication disabilities and reframes inclusion as relational, contextual, and collaborative. Her scholarship consistently bridges theory, policy, and practice, foregrounding communication access as essential to dignity, agency, and social participation.

Inger Ekman Moderator

PhD, Senior professor
University of Gothenburg

Inger is the former director and founder of University of Gothenburg Centre for Person-Centred Care (GPCC) www.gpcc.gu.se, in Sweden. During eight years she was head of the Institute of Health and Care Sciences and during two, vice dean at the Sahlgrenska academy, University of Gothenburg. Between 2013-2015 she coordinated a 7th FP, EU project resulting in a roadmap on future health care in Europe. 2016 - 2020 she was the coordinator of COSTCARES (www.costcares.eu) a European initiative, involving 28 partner countries, on testing implementation of person-centred care. Inger Ekman's research has mainly focused on controlled studies evaluating person-centred care interventions, she has around 170 publications in scientific journals and is at present primary investigator in a randomized controlled trial evaluating remote person-centred care in frail elderly.

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