Through Their Eyes: Helping pediatric patients tell their stories

Bunmi Fariyike:

As a second-year medical student, seeing 12:20 flash on the clock meant I had a precious 70-minute window within which to eat, chat, finish assignments, and maybe mindlessly scroll for a bit before my afternoon courses. But, on this particular day, I bypassed my usual routine and set off down the hospital’s hallways until I stood in front of Coralie’s room, admiring the juxtaposition of colorful streamers and black-and-white medical instructions that adorned her door. 

I had first met Coralie, a 6-year-old pediatric patient, and her parents a few months earlier when they joined “Through Their Eyes,” a project that gives children living with illness and their parents the opportunity to document their hospital experience through photos. My roommate Niisoja and I came up with the idea at our dining room table and pitched it to the larger Knight Hennessy community as a KHeystone Project. Soon, we had amassed a team of graduate students across disciplines who were flitting around the hospital much like I was. Beyond promoting play and creativity, we wanted to interview participants—to hear in their words what their photos signified and what we could learn from them. 

That curiosity is what brought me to Coralie’s door that day. I entered the room to the sound of afternoon cartoons and a warm greeting from Coralie’s mom, Sarah. We caught up before I pulled out my laptop to access the photos they had both taken. As we scrolled through them, my eye was drawn to details that medical school had taught me to focus on. Even though we had never discussed what brought Coralie to the hospital, I noticed IV poles and EKG leads, pieces of equipment that offered clues to Coralie’s medical history and her clinical course in the hospital. And yet, these clues were just pieces of photos that overflowed with life: a carefully organized collection of her favorite toys, a Child Life specialist using an iPad to help ease her anxiety during a medical exam, and a thorough hair-washing by her mom. When I asked Coralie what she thought we should take from all the photos, she turned to me and matter-of-factly stated, “That I got a lot of presents,” as a smile crept across her face. We all couldn’t help but laugh. 

In interviewing Coralie and her mother, it became clear that medical school was teaching me to notice and to ask—but only from my own very clinical perspective. Without the photos and without the space to discuss them, I never would have known how important play was to Coralie, or how critical it was that Sarah be able to continue performing motherly acts for her child. 

Participating in “Through Their Eyes” has given me a lens through which to see a patient’s humanity and illness at the same time. Sometimes, when I am shuffling through the pediatric hospital on the way to a clinical obligation, I choose to take the long way so I can stop by the gallery of participant photos. When I do, I think about what an honor it has been to help tell these patients’ stories and what a responsibility it is to keep making space for stories to be told. 

Kathy Hu:

I was introduced to “Through Their Eyes” as a first-year medical student during my first KHeystone Project showcase. There were dozens of brilliant ideas, but this one stayed with me. I heard Coralie’s story, saw photos of institutional hospital rooms brought to life through a child’s perspective, and watched the project team’s eyes light up as they spoke about partnering with patients and their families. I left that evening knowing I wanted to be part of it.

Over the past five years since this project started, nearly 30 Stanford graduate students have had the same thought. Students from a range of fields—medicine, design, engineering, journalism—have come together around a shared goal: to help patients tell their stories. Knight-Hennessy Scholars, with its emphasis on multidisciplinary collaboration, has been the perfect environment for this type of initiative. We’ve seen engineers spend time at a patient’s bedside, medical students step into design roles, and team members stretch beyond their disciplines in ways they might not have otherwise, learning from one another and from patients along the way. Just as we invite children to share their voices, we’ve also created space for our team members to do the same.

The result is a project that may have started as a student initiative but has grown to encompass an entire community. Through friendships across scholar cohorts and disciplines, and through gallery exhibitions at Denning House, we’ve brought people together around storytelling — a fundamental building block of the Knight-Hennessy experience. Those evenings at Denning—when patients, families, and scholars stand side by side, looking at and talking about photos they took—have been among the most revealing, meaningful moments of this work.

Over time, I had the opportunity to step into a leadership role and help expand the project beyond its original scope. One of the biggest challenges of starting something like “Through Their Eyes” is not just building it, but sustaining it—trusting that it will continue. Knight-Hennessy provided a strong foundation for that continuity: What began with a small group of KH scholars has extended beyond Denning House, with new students across the broader Stanford community joining the effort and carrying the work forward. This legacy—of telling stories and recognizing the humanity in others—is one we hope will continue for years to come. 

As the community has grown, so too has the impact of its work. In the years since the project launched, we’ve partnered with over 50 patients at Stanford and across the world, capturing hundreds of photographs and stories. We have published research, written articles about our work, created a permanent exhibition at Stanford Children’s Hospital, and recently launched a website to share more broadly. But the greatest impact isn’t measured in publications or exhibitions. It’s in the moments when a child picks up a camera and begins to play again, or when a parent tells us that documenting their experience helped them process it. In those moments, something shifts. The hospital is no longer just a place of illness—it becomes a space where memories are made, where joy and difficulty coexist, and where stories take shape.

That realization has fueled us to go beyond the walls of Stanford. Today, we are in the process of partnering with the John Muir Health System to bring this project to Contra Costa County in California. We’ve worked with migrant children in Tijuana, providing disposable cameras to capture their individual perspectives. In Santiago, Chile, we partnered with public libraries to host storytelling workshops with families navigating vulnerable circumstances. At one workshop, parents chased their children around the library, laughing, taking pictures, and creating small books filled with images and drawings. One mother showed me her finished book—pages of scribbles and photographs—and thanked us for the chance to slow down and capture time with her 6-month-old.

It’s clear that across hospitals and across borders, the need is the same.

Storytelling is universal. It reminds us to slow down, to notice, to appreciate what makes each of us unique and deeply human, and to honor the experiences we might otherwise overlook, especially those of patients and families whose voices are not always centered. Through this work—whether in the hospital, the refugee camp, or urban streets—we’ve learned that some of the most powerful shifts in perspective come not from teaching others how to look at something, but from learning to see “Through Their Eyes.”

Bunmi Fariyike (2021 cohort), is pursuing an MD at Stanford School of Medicine. Originally from Nigeria, he aspires to combine engineering and medicine to improve access to surgical care in Nigeria and other developing nations. 

Katherine Hu (2022 cohort) is pursuing an MD at Stanford School of Medicine and an MBA at Stanford Graduate School of Business. She aspires to combine medicine, engineering, and entrepreneurship to advance medical innovation for marginalized communities worldwide, especially children. 

Knight-Hennessy scholars represent a vast array of cultures, perspectives, and experiences. While we as an organization are committed to elevating their voices, the views expressed are those of the scholars, and not necessarily those of KHS.