The Ida Institute launched our new Living Well with Hearing Loss counseling tool at this year’s British Academy of Audiology (BAA) Conference in Wales.
The Living Well tool is designed to encourage qualitative dialogue about a patient’s subjective experience. The tool enables hearing care professionals to explore the person behind the hearing loss and to discover and address otherwise undetected aspects that may significantly impact the patient’s ability to lead the life of their choice.
The tool consists of a series of photo cards depicting a range of different real-life situations. The patient is asked to pick the situations that best match their daily lives. Then, the patient sorts them according to how easy or challenging each situation is for them to manage. Once this is established, importance markers are used to indicate how important it is for them to manage well in each of the identified situations. Next, strategy cards are used to describe which technological or communication strategies can be applied in each case going forward.
At the BAA conference, Melanie Gregory, Karen Parfitt and Kirsten Lauritsen from the Ida Institute led an interactive workshop on the new tool.
Over 50 hearing care professionals and researchers participated in the workshop. One participant was Deb Hall from the Biomedical Research Unit in Nottingham.
“The final product is really interesting, in terms of a tool that can be used in such a wide variety of different ways,” according to Deb. “You can pick different aspects of the tool based on the individual patient and the particular time constraints.”
Natalie Ruis, who heads the Southampton Audiology Department and specializes in adult rehabilitation, also attended the workshop. She came away impressed with the tool and excited about the opportunity to use it with her patients.
“We can easily lead the patient,” remarked Natalie. “It is important to get the patient to tell you what their experience of hearing loss is and let them open up. This is why this tool is useful...We will use this tool on certain patients. When a patient comes in [to the clinic] with their partner and they are in denial, looking at the situation cards in the tool can help them realize that they are having communication difficulties.”
We invite others to use the tool in their clinical practice and provide us feedback on the Ida Forum. To learn more about the tool and purchase a copy, please click here.