International journal of audiology
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Patient-centred care is a term frequently associated with quality health care. Despite extensive literature from a range of health-care professions that provide description and measurement of patient-centred care, a definition of patient-centredness in audiological rehabilitation is lacking. The current study aimed to define patient-centred care specific to audiological rehabilitation from the perspective of older adults who have owned hearing aids for at least one year. ⋯ This study reported two models: the first model describes what older adults with hearing aids believe constitutes patient-centred audiological rehabilitation. The second provides a guide to operationalised patient-centred care. Further research is required to address questions pertaining to the presence, nature, and impact of patient-centred audiological rehabilitation.
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Patient-centredness is becoming a core value of health services worldwide, however it remains largely unexplored in audiology. This study investigated audiologists' preferences for patient-centredness and identified factors that explain audiologists' preferences for patient-centredness. ⋯ Audiologists prefer client-centredness and age, years of experience, and employment characteristics can partly explain preferences for patient-centredness. Future research should explore the relationships between patient-centredness and intervention outcomes in audiology.
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This discussion paper aims to synthesise the literature on patient-centred care from a range of health professions and to relate this to the field of rehabilitative audiology. Through review of the literature, this paper addresses five questions: What is patient-centred care? How is patient-centred care measured? What are the outcomes of patient-centred care? What are the factors contributing to patient-centred care? What are the implications for audiological rehabilitation? ⋯ This paper concludes that patient-centred care is in line with the aims and scope of practice for audiological rehabilitation. However, there is emerging evidence that we still need to inform the conceptualisation of patient-centred audiological rehabilitation. A definition of patient-centred audiological rehabilitation is needed to facilitate studies into the nature and outcomes of it in audiological rehabilitation practice.
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Backward-facing directional processing (Back-DIR) is an algorithm that employs an anti-cardioid directivity pattern to enhance speech arriving from behind the listener. An experiment that was originally designed to evaluate Back-DIR, together with its follow-up experiment, are reported to illustrate how hearing-aid users' voices could affect directional benefit. ⋯ In the original experiment, hearing aids were affected by listeners' voices such that Back-DIR was not always activated when the target speech was presented. In the follow-up experiment, listeners' voice effects were eliminated by the carrier phrase activating Back-DIR before the sentences were presented. The results suggest that the effect of hearing-aid technologies is highly dependent on the characteristics of listening conditions.