6.2. Improving the experience of people with hearing loss

The experiences of people with hearing loss using primary care services often include frustration, confusion and, critically, some patient safety issues. Practical solutions exist that are simple to implement for little or no cost. The focus of the solutions is on awareness and practice process change. It is supplemented with a simple but powerful IT-based communication tool which is available free to GPs.

The challenge

There are about 9 million people with hearing loss in the UK – this is one in seven of the population. On an average day in the consulting room, a GP will see several of these people as patients.1 In the same day, the reception team in an average-sized practice will have managed 40 to 50 interactions with people with hearing loss. The experiences of these patients have been captured2 and make for challenging reading.

Here are some examples from some recent research undertaken by SignHealth:

• Of the clinical consultation – patients leaving the surgery with no idea what is wrong with them and others leaving the surgery with little or no understanding of their medication and then taking the wrong amount.
• Of the appointment and reception systems – difficulty or even inability to get an appointment by telephone. Some patients suffering stress, embarrassment and missed appointments, partly due to waiting rooms operating ‘listen for your name’ systems.

1 Royal National Institute for Deaf People (RNID) (2004),GP guidance for deaf patients

2 SignHealth (February 2009), Deaf and disabled people’s experience of primary care