Lindsey Jorgensen has introduced the Communication Rings tool into her daily routine with patients at the University of South Dakota hearing clinic. The tool provides Lindsey with a practical and easy way to record and visualize a patient’s network of communication partners.
The Communication Rings tool creates a visualization of the patient’s social network. The exercise allows the patient to consider the people in their social network and to identify the frequency of communication with these individuals.
With the Communication Rings, Lindsey Jorgensen ensures that communication partners are discussed during each consultation session even if they are not actually present. The discussions sparked by the tool help illustrate to the patient the impact of their hearing loss on members of their social network. This is important, according to Lindsey, because many of her patients are unwilling to acknowledge that their hearing loss contributes to communication challenges or impacts the lives of others.
“A lot of patients are not really motivated to get hearing aids. We try to tell them that hearing is not a one-way activity. Other people, such as their family and friends, actually want to communicate with them,” states Lindsey Jorgensen. “When we fit hearing aids, we are often treating the person who is not actually even in the consultation session: the communication partner. The communication partner will also benefit from the result of the consultation session. Speaking with a colleague, we were trying to strategize how we could involve communication partners in the decision-making process. The Communication Rings tool helps us talk to patients about their communication partners, and incorporate them into the consultation session. It also helps us identify if the patient would like to use other technologies like FM systems or remote microphones with people in the center of the circle.”
Lindsey is better equipped to follow-up with patients on their communication challenges at a later consultation by utilizing the information recorded on the Communication Rings and stored in the patient's file.
By reviewing that information, Lindsey can quickly ascertain the names and attributes of the most important communication partners in the patient’s life. This enables her to ask specific questions about how communication has evolved with these individuals since the last appointment. She can determine whether communication strategies and amplification have made a positive impact on communication.
Some of Lindsey’s patients, however, find it difficult to conceptualize their social network in the way suggested by the Communication Rings tool. This has not diminished the value of the tool. For these patients, Lindsey finds it useful to keep the Communication Rings in the back of her mind as she engages the patient in a discussion about their social interactions.
“It is a love-hate relationship in some ways. Either people really like the Communication Rings and latch on to the visual presentation of their network. Others, such as the traditional, older farmers who come to visit us, have a difficult time going through these kinds of tools,” states Lindsey Jorgensen. “With these patients I have found that you can still go through the tool as long as you keep the rings in your head, rather than presenting the patient with a sheet of paper.”
Lindsey Jorgensen is an Assistant Professor in the Communication Sciences and Disorders department at the University of South Dakota. She has completed both an Au.D. and Ph.D. in Audiology at the University of Pittsburgh. Her PhD dissertation explored whether tests used to diagnose dementia can lead to false results if a person has hearing loss. The dissertation is expected to be published in a peer reviewed journal in the near future. Lindsey attended the Ida Institute’s Living Well with Hearing Loss seminar series in 2011.