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PubMed · 874432

Improving communication with the deaf patient.

S L Davenport
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Abstract

Deafness affects 1.8 million people in the United States. The special comminication problems of deaf people may lead to serious misunderstandings, particularly during a medical evaluation. Patients with no residual hearing usually read lips with only 40 percent accuracy. Furthermore, physicians may have great difficulty understanding the deaf patient's impaired speech and faulty written English. Underestimating the patient's intelligence, the doctor may give reassurances or oversimplified explanations. The purposes of this paper are to clarify the reasons for the speech and language problems of deaf people and to dispel some common misconceptions about deafness and sign language. Recommendations are given for improving doctor-patient communication.

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DeafnessHearing AidsHumansIntelligenceLanguageLanguage DevelopmentLipreadingNonverbal CommunicationPhysician-Patient RelationsSign LanguageSpeechVerbal BehaviorJournal ArticleResearch Support, U.S. Gov't, P.H.S.

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S L Davenport. 1977. Improving communication with the deaf patient.. https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/874432/

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Demographics, psychiatric diagnoses, and other characteristics of North American Deaf and hard-of-hearing inpatients.

This study examined demographic and clinical data from a specialty deaf inpatient unit so as to better understand characteristics of severely and chronically mentally ill deaf people. The study compares deaf and hearing psychiatric inpatients on demographic variables, psychiatric discharge diagnoses, a language assessment measure, a cognitive ability measure, and a measure of psychosocial functioning and risk of harm to self and others. Overall, findings indicate a broader range of diagnoses than in past studies with posttraumatic stress disorder being the most common diagnosis. Compared with hearing patients in the same hospital, deaf patients were less likely to be diagnosed with a psychotic or substance abuse disorder and more likely to be diagnosed with a mood, anxiety, personality, or developmental disorder. Psychosocial functioning of the deaf patients was generally similar to hearing psychiatric patients. Deaf patients presented significantly higher risks than hearing patients in areas of self-harm and risk of sexual offending. Cognitive scores show that both the deaf and hearing inpatient population is skewed toward persons who are lower functioning. An additional surprising finding was that 75% of deaf individuals fell into the nonfluent range of communication in American Sign Language.

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