PP207 - Future Health-Care Providers’ Preparedness to Serve Those with Hearing Loss

Abstract:
Hearing loss significantly affects individuals' access to healthcare, impacting communication with providers. A cross-sectional survey will assess the preparedness of professional students at the University of Oklahoma Health Sciences to care for patients with hearing impairments. Specifically, we will assess future healthcare providers’ knowledge of, experiences with, and attitudes towards accommodating these patients with hearing loss. A regression analysis will determine if type of interprofessional training and area of healthcare are associated with preparedness to accommodate patients with hearing loss. Our findings will shape educational practices to make healthcare more accessible for people with hearing loss.

Summary:
Background Information
Hearing loss can impact many aspects of an individual’s life, and the general population may not be aware of strategies to best accommodate people with hearing loss. Communication difficulties in healthcare can negatively impact patient care, and many healthcare providers are unaware of strategies to best accommodate individuals with hearing loss. If an individual with hearing loss is unable to communicate with their healthcare team, their access to healthcare is severely limited.

Study Setting and Hypotheses
Hearing loss can impact healthcare-provider and patient interactions. The University of Oklahoma Health Sciences Center is one of four academic health centers in the United States with seven colleges offering 70 pre-professional, professional, and graduate majors to 4,000 students with a strong emphasis on interprofessional education. It would be important to assess students’ preparedness to serve with patients with hearing loss to inform interprofessional education for a new generation of healthcare providers. We hypothesize that most students do not have adequate knowledge of or adequate experience with but do have positive attitudes toward facilitating provider interactions with patients with hearing loss.

Aims
Specific aim one is to assess students’ knowledge of, experiences with, and attitudes toward serving patients with hearing loss. Specific aim two is to determine if the amount of interprofessional training (none vs. didactic vs. clinical vs. didactic + clinical) or enrollment within a particular college (allied health, dentistry, medicine, nursing, pharmacy, public health, or graduate studies).

Type of Study
The study is a cross-sectional survey.

Methods
A Qualtrics survey was developed to assess students’ knowledge of, experiences with, and attitudes communicating toward facilitating interactions with patients with hearing loss. A link to the survey is being sent to students on the OUHSC campus. Descriptive statistics will be computed and reported for all variables. Some categories may be collapsed for multiple variables due to small cell count sizes. Initially, univariate models may be created for each outcome and explanatory variables. Significant and near significant variables (p < 0.10) from univariate models will be used in constructing the multivariate model. For all multivariate models, a backwards selection process will be used to find the most parsimonious multivariate model. All statistical tests assumed a significance level of 0.05 and SAS 9.4 was used for all computations.

Conclusion
The results of this study will inform interprofessional education on a large academic health sciences center. The results will identify which colleges on campus to target for informational outreach. Outreach material will be shared with those who come by the poster. This project will be completed by February 3, 2025.