Capabilities, opportunities and motivations of staff to provide hearing support to long-term care home residents with dementia.
Hannah Cross, Christopher J Armitage, Piers Dawes and 2 others
PMID 37382285WHAT IT FOUND
Staff in long-term care homes reported providing hearing support to only half of the residents with dementia they believed would benefit.
They cited lack of time and resources as the main barriers, with care assistants and private homes reporting the lowest provision.
Key findings
01Staff reported providing hearing support to only 50.0% of residents with dementia they thought would benefit.
02Physical opportunity (time, resources) was the lowest-rated domain and the only significant predictor of providing support.
03Care assistants and staff in privately owned homes reported providing significantly less hearing support than registered nurses and those in local authority homes.
STILL TO COME
How it was doneWhat they foundWhat it means for SLPs
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What it does not show
The study relied on self-reported data, which may overestimate staff capabilities and underestimate barriers. The sample lacked ethnic diversity, with 95.2% of respondents identifying as White, which may not represent the wider UK care workforce. The measure of 'hearing support' was broad, including everything from hearing aid management to communication techniques, so it is unclear which specific behaviours were lacking.
Declared interests
The work was supported by the Alzheimer's Society and the National Institute for Health Research.
The easy way to misread this
Do not interpret the low rates of hearing aid checking as evidence of staff incompetence or lack of motivation. The study found that staff rated their own capabilities highly, and the primary barrier was a lack of physical opportunity, such as time and resources.