Hearing Accessibility in Alberta Health Care

By Sheila C. Serup

For Albertans with hearing loss, using self-advocacy and technology is becoming vital in health care, particularly in hospitals and residences.

All Albertans, at one point or another in their life journey, will experience a hospital visit or stay. Accurate two-way communication between healthcare providers and patients is essential for healthcare but is not always accessible for people with hearing loss. Certain settings, such as the hospital, create even more accessibility barriers for people with hearing loss due to the loud noise and stressful environment. Although there are many tools and strategies that improve communication access for people with hearing loss, they are not being used to their full potential in the hospital or other healthcare facilities.

Accessibility services for Albertans with hearing loss range vary across the province.

The Alberta branches of the Canadian Hard of Hearing Association (CHHA) provide several services.

In Edmonton, CHHA-Edmonton branch delivers its Hearing Healthcare kits by way of a presentation to long term care facilities, including residents and staff in Edmonton.

“The kit contains pertinent information for the residents to help empower them when they need to go to a hospital,” describes Cindy Gordon, Program Director for CHHA Edmonton. The kits include handouts and tools for patients with hearing loss to communicate effectively with hospital staff. With these, “their stay in hospital is more comfortable,” she notes. The Hearing Healthcare Kits are funded by a federal New Horizons for Seniors Program grant. Details on the kits are available at CHHA-Edmonton https://www.chha-ed.com/

In Calgary, CHHA-Calgary provides, on request, real time captioning services if needed for medical appointments.

Research is underway by the University of Calgary (led by Dr. Marcello Tonelli) in partnership with Alberta Health Services and non-profit organizations to better understand how hard of hearing patients and support persons experience hospital care, and to make suggestions for improving accessibility.
The goal of the study is to learn more about what changes are needed to make health services more accessible for hard of hearing patients and how to implement them into practice. This summer, the team invites people with hearing loss and support persons to attend focus group discussions to share thoughts about what tools and strategies can improve health services in Alberta.

Are you interested in contributing ideas? For more information or to register, please email hearing.study@ucalgary.ca.

WEB: www.chha.ca/calgary-2/
Call 1-800-263-8068