Browsing by Subject "huonokuuloisuus"

Tiivistelmä - Referat – Abstract Aims. Sensorineural hearing loss is a slowly progressing chronic condition that has significant negative effects on social life and quality of life for working-age people with hearing loss. The negative impact of hearing loss can be alleviated by the use of hearing aids, but only a minority of those who would benefit from them actually use them. According to previous research hearing aid rehabilitation is technically and medically oriented, and in the encounters there is rarely room for clients´ own experiences. The research regarding working-age hearing aid adopters’ experiences expressed during audiological encounters is still scarse. This study examines the types of experiences related to hearing loss and use of hearing aids working-age hearing aid adopters bring up during audiological encounters, if the experiences differ in different stages of rehabilitation process, and on whose initiative the client shares his/her experiences. Methods. The subjects were 18 working-age hearing aid adopters and the professionals working with them. The data consisted of transcribed video material from 44 audiological encounters in different phases of the hearing aid rehabilitation process: pre-fitting, fitting and post-fitting. The length of the video material was 25 hours and 17 minutes. The data was collected as a part of the international research project “Communication with Hearing Aid.” The initiatives for expressing the experiences were studied using conversation analysis. The content of the experiences was examined by applying content analysis, and the frequency and the relative frequency of the experiences were counted. Results and conclusions. The clients started to voice their experiences during the encounters on their own as well as on the professionals’ initiative. 774 experiences were found in the data and were further divided into 1592 meaning units. Four main categories emerged: 1. living with hearing loss, 2. hearing aid use and the attitudes and experiences related to hearing aid rehabilitation, 3. the features of the hearing aid and physical sensations related to it, and 4. the experiences from the auditory world. The agenda of each clinical encounter influenced the content of the experiences in different stages of the rehabilitation process: In the pre-fitting encounters the majority of the experiences dealt with living with hearing loss, in the fitting encounters with the experiences from the auditory world, and in the post-fitting encounters with hearing aid use and the attitudes and experiences related to hearing aid rehabilitation. The information gained about clients’ experiences expressed during audiological encounters can be used to improve the practices of the clinical encounter so that it better meets the demands of client-centredness, and thus potentially enhances treatment adherence.