Pilot Intervention Aims to Improve Outcomes by Changing Daily Routines

By Timothy Cooke

As part of her PhD studies at the University of Surrey, Ida Fellow Fiona Barker plans to design and pilot an intervention that looks to improve clinical outcomes for adults with acquired hearing loss. The intervention, which will likely include at least one of the Ida Institute's tools, aims to close the gap between the number of individuals prescribed hearing aids and those who become successful users.

It is well recognized in audiology research that a large number of individual who are fitted with hearing aids do not become effective users of their hearing devices. This refers to the all too common story of the person who takes action on their hearing, receives hearing aids, but does not use them and leaves them in the drawer.

In her research, Fiona Barker looks to identify an intervention that can ensure that more people who are fitted with hearing aids eventually use them and use them effectively. The ultimate goal is to influence policy and quality standards within audiology so that they incorporate a focus on self-management support and patient-centered care where it is shown to positively impact outcomes.

Fiona aims to design a pilot intervention where one or more of the Ida tools are embedded into a clinician’s normal routine workflow. The added intervention will be fully integrated into the clinician’s electronic record keeping system and will not add more time to the appointment. For example, the Line or the Box would be completed on a computer by the patient under the clinician’s guidance. The results of the conversation would be recorded directly in the patient’s electronic record. Because the output from the Line or the Box would be part of the normal workflow, there would be a higher likelihood for the clinician to use the intervention and record the results in the patient’s electronic records.  

“By incorporating the tool within the normal workflow, the professional would not need to physically tick a box and state that they used the tool. Use of the tool would occur automatically as it would be fully integrated into the process. In this way, the entire system would reward clinicians who use the tools with patients,” states Fiona Barker. “If you can prove that the tool improves outcomes, or determine that there is a correlation between using the tool and having more people using hearing aids than normal, then you have a good argument why the tools should be in the standards.”

Fiona admits that her pilot intervention represents just one small step in a much larger endeavor to determine how patient-centered care methods can help more individuals effectively use their hearing instruments. She hopes that by changing the system so that professionals are given credit and rewarded for using such tools and methods, it will increase usage of the tools and allow researchers to collect a much larger and broader set of data on their effectiveness. This data could be a critical element when attempting to add the Ida tools and similar methods to the quality standards of large public sector hearing care systems.

Fiona Barker attended the Ida Institute seminar series on Living Well with Hearing Loss in 2011. She is a registered clinical scientist specializing in balance and dizziness at Windsor Audiology Centre in the United Kingdom. We look forward to sharing more about Fiona Barker’s research as she completes her PhD studies.