Hearing Loss and Patient Reported Experience (HELP)
Research type
Research Study
Full title
Hearing Loss and Patient Reported Experience (HELP): Using patient experience to improve audiology
IRAS ID
308816
Contact name
Helen Pryce
Contact email
Sponsor organisation
University Hospitals Bristol and Weston NHS Foundation Trust, Research and Innovation
Duration of Study in the UK
3 years, 0 months, 4 days
Research summary
Aims: We aim to improve knowledge of patient experience of hearing loss. People with hearing loss adapt communication and navigate hearing services (audiology). We have designed a way to show whether the services are working well for their patients.
Background: In hearing services, most people with hearing loss are given hearing aids, but people stop using hearing aids because they find practical management and adapting to new sound hard. For some, managing the aids is more difficult than managing hearing loss without hearing aids.
Patient Reported Experience Measures (PREMs) are simple questionnaires about specific conditions that could be used to show whether audiology helped or not.
Design: To create the PREM, first we will talk to people with hearing loss who do and do not seek help from hearing services. We will recruit them from clinical sites and voluntary groups across the country. We will find out common issues and problems of coping with hearing loss and efforts to manage hearing aids, helped by our patient advisors. This information will lead us to produce a PREM questionnaire. By asking people who work in hearing services and patient groups to help, we will improve how the questionnaire reads and looks. We will ask people to fill it out and tell us what they understand by each question. We will ask a large number of people to fill it in, compare it with other questionnaires and see if it is different for people who have had different types of NHS support with their hearing loss. Finally we will see how the PREM works in a hearing clinic. By talking to audiology staff, we can find out how this could be used in day to day practice. It can tell us about useful changes to the way services are delivered.REC name
West of Scotland REC 3
REC reference
22/WS/0057
Date of REC Opinion
6 May 2022
REC opinion
Favourable Opinion