The candles on the meeting table flickered all day. At the Royal Brisbane Women’s Hospital (RBWH), the Voluntary Assisted Dying (VAD) team kept vigil. Sometimes in silence. Sometimes in whispers over the day’s cases. Each candle marked a passing. Each, a story, a reason the work should go on.
When Metro North Health's VAD team’s future fell into doubt, they turned to us. They already had the statistics and executive summaries. What they needed was a way to show the value of their impact through the stories that rarely made it onto paper. Stories that could only be told.
We set up quietly. Staff came through in ones and twos. Families spoke from their kitchens and living rooms. Sixteen stories rose to the surface. Just fragments, but enough. The outcome? Funding renewed. Perceptions shifted. And in the centre of it all, those candles burning, hour after hour.
The candles at the centre of the meeting room mark each passing from VAD. A soft ritual in a hard place.
How We Worked
When Metro North Health's VAD team asked us to listen, they helped us navigate where to begin.
They chose the families. Cleared the time. Made space in their own office so we could set up a story hub, we turned a corner of a conference room into a quiet recording studio. Over the following days, nurses, doctors, and execs stepped in one by one. Some came ready to speak. Others just needed a moment.
We followed the families outwards, to homes, kitchen tables, verandahs. For some, it was a guided interview. For others, a recorded conversation between two people who’d lived it together. Each session shaped by comfort and some scripting.
From more than 25 recordings, we drew together 16 voices. The team gave us a space for the exhibition. Then helped bring people to it. The result: a multimedia story campaign, audio, images, handwritten words. All delivered in under three months, and played back to the people it was made for.
Five Conversations That Stayed With Us
Stories from the families and VAD patients who trusted us with their last days together.
Cash & Leah
Cash wasn’t ready for Stage 4 cancer. Who is? But once the diagnosis came, he didn’t want to wait for the ending to decide itself. VAD gave him a way to shape it. For Cash, it wasn’t about giving up. It was about deciding what mattered most with the time he had left.
Steve
Steve has lived in places most of us would struggle to find on a map, Afghanistan, the Solomons, Papua New Guinea. It was the way each place asked him to adapt. He talked about choices—some that worked out, some that didn’t.
Helen & David
After a cancer diagnosis and a prognosis of two months, David Bannerman chose Voluntary Assisted Dying. His wife Helen cared for the last seven months of his life. When it came time to plan his passing, David asked if he could die in their bed. “Is that too creepy?” he’d asked. Helen said no, it was their bed, it always had been.
Kay & John
When the time came, John Fraser chose VAD. Kay, his wife of 31 years, said it gave him peace. It spared him the slow decline. It gave them both some control, when everything else felt out of their hands. Kay later said the process could be simpler—less paper, more time—but she’s grateful they had the option at all.
John
John reflected on his years as a teacher, proud of the lives he’d helped shape. That legacy gave him comfort. So did the breeze off the bay and the knowledge that, even now, he could choose presence over panic.
What This Made Possible
These stories were meant to be heard. It was captured to be shared with senior leaders, played during key presentations, exhibited on-site, and archived as the first 100 days of operation.
They helped renew funding. They helped shift perceptions.
They reminded decision-makers what this team really does beyond policy, clinical care, and paperwork. For the VAD team, storytelling wasn’t a side project. It was the difference between being understood and being overlooked.
That’s what we offer: a way to bring the human heart of your organisation's impact into the room where decisions are made.
FiveVoices from Inside the System
Stories from the clinicians, coordinators, and leaders who stood beside the families.
Kobie
As a clinical nurse consultant in the VAD program, Kobie Clay knows what it means to stand in contested spaces.For her, it’s about one thing: patient choice. Giving people control in a system that so often takes it away.
Steve
When Voluntary Assisted Dying became law, Dr Jeffrey Rowland didn’t wait to be asked. He stepped forward. As Executive Director of the Medicine Stream for Metro North, he helped lay the groundwork, translating new legislation into clinical systems, coordinating across departments, and doing it all without designated funding.
Lisa
In just a few weeks, Lisa Blyth had already administered VAD to five patients. As a clinical nurse consultant, she’s at the bedside, witnessing these final moments, and helping make them possible. There aren’t enough doctors in the program. But Lisa keeps showing up.
Leah
When Queensland’s VAD legislation came into effect, Leah Thompson was tasked with turning it into something real. As program manager, she helped build the Metro North VAD team from the ground up. On limited funding, and under watchful eyes. One doctor. Some nursing support. Admin. Allied health. Every role chosen with care.
Vivienne & Sharon
On the third of March, 2023, Angels in Aprons supported their first VAD client. Vivienne stood quietly with Mr Smith’s family. She’d built a connection with him over history, music, and the classics. When the moment came, she stepped back, letting his son hold his hand, but stayed in the doorway, eyes meeting his.
Talking Stories Studio is the enterprise production arm of Talking Stories.
We partner with organisations, corporate, and institutions to document and translate impact, through recorded interviews, photography, audio/ video storytelling, and public or internal exhibitions.
Our work captures the human side of complex systems. What people experience. What teams carry. What decision-makers need to hear, not just read. We create story assets built for boardrooms and briefing packs rooted in real voices.
If your organisation does work worth listening to, we’ll help you tell it. From the inside.