Simple measures to improve communication

Released 15/10/2009

Survey reveals difficulties faced by deaf and hearing impaired patients

More than half of deaf and hearing impaired patients say they regularly face difficulties in communicating with their GP surgery, according to a new survey.

The survey of 525 people - run by patient information website www.patient.co.uk and the charity SignHealth - highlights the barriers to healthcare experienced by this large and growing patient group.

An estimated nine million people in the UK experience hearing limitation and 70 per cent of people over 70 have some hearing loss.

Key issues identified in the survey were:

56 per cent of respondents said their hearing difficulties had led to poor communication, either in a medical (GP consultation) or a procedural (communication with the surgery - e.g. appointment booking) environment

30 per cent said they had experienced communication problems that were difficult to resolve when discussing their health - leading to missed symptoms, confusion about medication or a lack of time to exchange full information in a consultation

8 per cent of respondents said they experienced difficult to resolve communication problems on every surgery visit

37 per cent said they had had difficulties because staff - both GPs and practice staff - did not consistently face them when speaking

35 per cent said they had missed appointments because they had not heard their name being called

The survey revealed that it was not just the profoundly deaf who experience problems. Sixty-four per cent of respondents considered themselves to be moderately deaf - yet they reported the same problems as the profoundly deaf, who made up 11 per cent of the sample.

The survey also identifies the many simple measures that surgeries could undertake to improve communication. These include:

Staff remembering to face patients when speaking (cited by 84 per cent of respondents); many respondents reported loss of communication when GPs turned to look at computer screens, for example

Giving out printed information to support a consultation; only 11 per cent of patients said their surgeries did this, yet 64 per cent said it would be helpful; free patient information leaflets are available to all GP surgeries from www.patient.co.uk, which is embedded in 90 per cent of surgery software

Having display screens to announce consultations or fetching the patient from the waiting room (cited by 57 per cent of respondents).

Additional services are available for GPs - including the easy-to-use SignTranslate online interpreting service, developed by the SignHealth charity. The service links a British Sign Language interpreter, via a web-cam, to the live consultation - helping both GP and deaf patient to ensure clear communication.

Steve Powell, Chief Executive of SignHealth, said: "This is a timely survey that reveals the breadth and depth of problems faced by deaf patients across the UK. It reinforces our findings from the last two years' NHS GP Patient surveys and strengthens our commitment as an organisation to campaign for better healthcare for deaf people.

"It was moving to hear the respondents' comments; many of them felt both frustrated and embarrassed at the difficulties they were experiencing, often on a very regular basis."

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