Competing agendas and other tensions in developing patient-centred communication in audiology education: a qualitative study of educator perspectives.

OBJECTIVE

Patient-centred communication (PCC) is an essential skill for effective healthcare provision and is accepted as a core competency in medicine and allied health. In audiology, recent studies have shown that audiologists rarely display PCC in adult hearing interactions. This highlights a need to investigate how PCC is taught and learnt in audiology. There is a paucity of studies on PCC in audiology education. The aim of this study is to examine educator perceptions of teaching PCC, including barriers and facilitators, in Australian graduate audiology programmes.

DESIGN

Semi-structured interviews were conducted with audiology educators responsible for communication training. Interview transcripts were analysed using qualitative content analysis.

STUDY SAMPLE

Nine participants, including programme coordinators and key teaching staff from all six Australian audiology programmes participated in the study.

RESULTS

PCC education was found to be influenced by four emerging themes: professional culture and values, contextual factors, knowledge and understanding of PCC and individual factors.

CONCLUSIONS

These results provide an insight into the competing agendas involved in implementing PCC education in both the university and clinical component of audiology programmes. The findings can play a role in refining and building the evidence-base for teaching and facilitating patient-centred audiological care in future audiologists.