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 But research on communication between doctors and patients has
largely excluded older people with hearing problems. Not taking
hearing loss into account means those earlier studies overlooked a
common, important and fixable problem in communication, researchers
write in the Journal of the American Geriatrics Society.
"This is one of the many things in geriatric medicine that I call
low hanging fruit," said senior author Dr. Joshua Chodosh of NYU
Langone Medical Center in New York City. "There are very simple
things we can do to make a difference."
In their report, he and his colleagues point to data suggesting that
a quarter of adults ages 60 to 69, and 80 percent of those age 80
and older, have some hearing loss in both ears.
To analyze the extent to which research on doctor-patient
communication has taken hearing loss into account, Chodosh and
colleagues identified 67 studies published between 2000 and 2016.
All measured verbal communication between doctors and patients age
60 and older in healthcare settings - but only 16 of the studies
made any mention of hearing loss.
In six studies, hearing loss was merely mentioned. Only three
studies examined or discussed a link between hearing loss and
communication, and only one actually tried to address hearing loss
to improve communication.
In the study in which researchers tried to address hearing loss, 22
percent of participants rated communication with their doctors as
poor or unsatisfactory at the start. That proportion fell to 6
percent after the introduction of voice amplifiers and cards for
informing doctors of patients' hearing problems.
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"For a long time, I’ve been aware that we don’t pay attention to
this enough in clinical medicine," Chodosh told Reuters Health.
"It’s a prevalent problem, whether it’s in the hospital and the
clinic."
The new analysis highlights a clear gap in research on
patient-provider communication and offers an area for improvement,
write Dr. Frank Lin of the Johns Hopkins School of Medicine in
Baltimore and Dr. Heather Whitson of the Duke University School of
Medicine in Durham, North Carolina, in an editorial.
Even when formal hearing and vision evaluations are not available,
patients can usually let doctors know if they're having problems
hearing or seeing, Lin and Whitson say.
They advise doctors that simple solutions, like minimizing
background noise, speaking face to face and creating education
materials, can sometimes help.
"We can start improving the evidence base - and clinical practice -
by simply remembering to ask," they write.
Chodosh and his team have more studies planned.
"I would like to see a much greater appreciation of this problem or
even just be able to partner with patients to come up with
strategies to improve communications," Chodosh said.
SOURCE: http://bit.ly/2pEDgeq and http://bit.ly/2pEwQfc Journal of
the American Geriatrics Society, online April 24, 2017.
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