Actions speak louder than words

Preferences for communication in clinic from deaf people: a cross‐sectional study

“…Our results are in keeping with other research indicating that those with hearing loss feel there is a lack of deaf awareness among health professionals [6,21,22]. Corrective action has been taken in the teaching of medical students [23,26], but this has a long lead-time for the general medical population.…”

“…A recent article in the BMJ [23] highlighted the inadequacies of current health care services for deaf patients and indicated that medical students needed to be better trained in deaf awareness and knowledge of sign language. Despite such calls there have been no large‐scale surveys which specifically assess how deaf language sign and deaf speech users wish to communicate with health professionals.…”

“…Previous research has shown that existing health care services for d/Deaf and hard of hearing people often leave much to be desired [5,6,9,20–22]. Examples of some of the difficulties that deaf people experience include meeting with a consultant who just shouted when ‘all that was needed was to speak slowly and clearly’, p. 3 [20] or not being able to express the symptoms of clinical depression because the doctor knew no sign language [23]. Research has shown that deaf sign language users have, for example, taken too much or too little medication because they were unsure of the instructions from their doctor [20].…”