Summary
The UK Council on Deafness created Deaf Awareness Week (6-12 May) to increase the visibility of challenges the deaf community face and educate others on how they can support them.
Patient Safety Learning has pulled together seven useful resources shared on the hub to help healthcare professionals, friends and family communicate and support people with hearing loss or deafness.
Content
1 Royal College of General Practitioners: Deafness and hearing loss toolkit
This educational kit, developed by Royal College of GPs (RCGP) in collaboration with RNID and NHS England, aims to support GPs to consult effectively with deaf patients by offering tips on how to communicate during face to face and remote appointments. It offers guidelines on how to recognise early symptoms of hearing loss and how to refer patients for a hearing assessment.
2 Communicating with patients with hearing loss or deafness—Can you hear me?
The authors of this JAMA article describe the experience of a family member who was in critical care, and who is deaf. They outline a lack of awareness amongst healthcare professionals about their relative's deafness and highlight the lack of understanding in how to communicate with her. They go on to outline a number of approaches to communicating with patients who are deaf or hard of hearing.
In this article, published in The Practising Midwife, Rachel Crowe argues that in the UK, pregnant women who are hearing impaired or D/deaf (sign language users) and deaf (who are hard of hearing but who have English as their first language and may lipread and/or use hearing aids) are often labelled as high risk and offered a care pathway that is unsuitable and detrimental to their care. This article provides an overview to the needs of D/deaf birthing people with a number of recommendations and tools for use in clinical practice.
4 Blog - 12 tips for communicating with deaf patients
Communication barriers are the number one reason deaf people have poorer health compared to hearing people. This blog by the organisation SignHealth gives 12 tips for healthcare workers and non-clinical staff on how to communicate with deaf people. It also describes the difficulties deaf people face when booking appointments and describes why remote consultations are problematic for deaf people.
5 CardMedic: Empowering staff and patients to communicate across any barrier
In this interview, anaesthetist Rachael Grimaldi tells us about CardMedic, the organisation she founded to empower staff and patients to communicate across any barrier. Rachael explains how their tools can be used to support vulnerable groups and reduce inequalities.
6 Cervical screening when deaf
In this blog, published by Jo's cervical cancer trust, two deaf women share their experiences of a cervical screening (and colposcopy) appointment, as well as their top tips for others.
The primary care team have an important role in making people feel welcomed, listened to and taken seriously. Yet we often hear examples about people who have not had their communication needs met within primary care. This includes people with sensory impairments. This report from National Voices sets out the key issues faced by people with specific communication needs within primary care and what they feel would make the biggest difference, as well as key actions primary care leaders and teams can take to support inclusive communication.
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