Public patient story • lived-experience anchor • acknowledgement
Rosie Bartel’s public story keeps the human consequences of system design visible.
Her experience is used here as a lived-experience anchor for design reflection. It is not research evidence, not representative evidence, and does not imply endorsement, participation, partnership, or authorship by Rosie Bartel.
Why the story is included
A reminder that process failures have human consequences.
Public sources describe Rosie Bartel as a patient advocate and sepsis survivor whose experience followed a total knee replacement complicated by a healthcare-associated MRSA infection. Her public accounts describe repeated surgeries, hospitalization, amputation, sepsis, and septic shock.
The purpose of including this story is not to generalize from one patient to a population. It is to preserve a lived-experience lens while the formal evidence base, benchmark findings, and leadership decisions are evaluated separately.
Would the patient and family know which warning signs require urgent escalation?
Would staff have a clear pathway when a patient or family says something is wrong?
Would the PFAC be able to identify a system gap and route it to an accountable owner?
Would leadership document what changed and report back?
Would the system learn from the experience rather than treat it as an isolated story?
How to use lived experience responsibly
Story, evidence, and local assessment remain distinct.
Use for reflection and design testing.
A patient story can illuminate consequences, reveal questions leaders should ask, and keep improvement work grounded in lived experience.
Use research to support general claims.
Claims about PFAC effectiveness, patient safety, patient experience, representation, and implementation are supported separately through peer-reviewed evidence and authoritative guidance.
Use Dartmouth Health evidence for Dartmouth Health conclusions.
Public or internal DH findings should be labeled by source, confidence, limitation, and validation status rather than inferred from a patient story.
Original sources
Listen to and read the story at its source.
One World, One Health podcast
Episode: “My life is never going to be normal again.” The toll of antibiotic resistance.
Open podcast episodeOne Health Trust transcript
The transcript documents Rosie Bartel’s account and provides a source that can be reviewed directly rather than paraphrased without attribution.
Open transcriptPublic story resources