Aims
To identify inpatients with hearing impairment and assess whether a voice amplifier (RNID Sonido Digital Listener) can improve communication with these patients.
Methods
Hearing impairment affects over 11 million people living in the UK with age-related hearing loss, affecting 71% of people over 70 years old. There is the potential for inpatients to be at risk of a sub-optimal patient experience through failure of effective verbal communication during medical ward rounds possibly leading to increased medical error.
Inpatients self-rated their hearing on a visual analogue scale (VAS) and scored how well they could hear the doctor during a ward round before and after the use of a voice amplifier. We defined hearing impairment as a score <7/10 on the VAS.
Results
Of the 22 patients, mean age 80.1 years (range 62.0–95.4), 64% were found to have a hearing impairment. Six patients took part in the intervention phase and the voice amplifier was found to improve how well the patient could hear the doctor by 5 points on average (range 2–7).
Conclusion
Hearing impairment was found to be a common problem on the respiratory medical wards at the Royal Derby Hospital and affected the quality of the patient–doctor consultation. The voice amplifier device has been shown to significantly improve the verbal communication between doctors and inpatients with hearing impairment. As a result of these findings, local funding has been granted for six more devices for ongoing data collection on a range of different wards.
Conflict of interest statement
Nil.
- © Royal College of Physicians 2019. All rights reserved.
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