Hearing and Health Outcomes: Recognizing and Addressing Hearing Loss in Hospitalized Older Adults

Abstract

As age increases, the prevalence of hearing loss significantly increases, reaching up to 89% of those 80 years and older. Hearing loss in older patients is often unrecognized and its consequences are often underappreciated. Hearing loss can interfere with the ability to exchange important health information and to participate in health care decision-making. Hearing loss during hospitalization increases the risk of misdiagnosis. There is a lack of empirical data regarding prevalence and recognition of hearing loss in hospitalized older adults. In this article, we describe a variety of negative outcomes that may result when older inpatients are functioning with unrecognized hearing loss.

Clinical Quality Improvement and Quality Improvement Research

“…QI projects involving interprofessional teams create opportunities to engage team members across professional boundaries. Aside from improving service delivery, these projects can be very effective in increasing awareness of the role of communication in quality of life and health outcomes (Bartlett, Blais, Tamblyn, Clermont, & MacGibbon, 2008;Houts, Doak, Doak, & Loscalzo, 2006;Mormer, Cipkala-Gaffin, Bubb, & Neal, 2017).…”

Older Persons and Nursing Staff’s Perspectives on Continence Care in Rehabilitation

“…Older persons and their families value person-centered care, in which individual perspectives are considered (Dahlke et al, 2018). Barriers to actively engaging older persons include insufficient health literacy-the ability to understand health information in order to manage health- (Kabel et al, 2015) and sensory impairments such as hearing loss (Mormer et al, 2017).…”