Smith Simon, Nordin Muhammad Arsyad Bin, Hinchy Tom, Henn Patrick, O'Tuathaigh Colm M P
Medical Education Unit, School of Medicine, University College Cork, Cork, Ireland.
ASSERT, University College Cork, Cork, Ireland.
Eur Geriatr Med. 2020 Dec;11(6):919-928. doi: 10.1007/s41999-020-00358-3. Epub 2020 Jul 26.
Age-related hearing loss increases significantly in people aged 60 years and older. An ageing population with impaired hearing presents an additional burden to the multiple comorbidities found among older patients, who are high users of medical services. We sought to quantify the extent to which hearing loss is cited and/or accounted for in studies of older adult interactions with health professionals.
We conducted a systematic review focusing on clinical communication with older adults, based on a literature search within two databases, PubMed and SCOPUS. Thematic analysis was used to classify studies based on type of health communication.
The following health communication categories were identified: quality of clinical communication; enhancement of patient-centred care; information exchange between patient and health professionals; informed consent and shared decision-making. The health profession category 'Physician'/'Doctor' contributed most of the articles (N = 81), and the remaining articles (N = 28) belonged to the other health professions. Twenty-eight papers of 109 (25.7%) mentioned hearing loss; 18 only referred to hearing loss within the context of the text, five referred to hearing loss as an exclusion criterion, three were associational findings, and only two studies included an intervention.
Despite the high prevalence of age-related hearing loss, we demonstrate that across the health professions, very few studies on health professional-older patient communication have incorporated hearing loss as a variable in their study design or analyses. Additionally, there is a lack of research focusing specifically on interventions designed to mitigate the effects of hearing loss on clinical communication.
60岁及以上人群中与年龄相关的听力损失显著增加。听力受损的老年人口给老年患者中常见的多种合并症带来了额外负担，而老年患者又是医疗服务的高频使用者。我们试图量化在关于老年人与健康专业人员互动的研究中提及和/或考虑听力损失的程度。
我们基于在PubMed和SCOPUS这两个数据库中进行的文献检索，对关注与老年人临床沟通的研究进行了系统综述。采用主题分析根据健康沟通类型对研究进行分类。
确定了以下健康沟通类别：临床沟通质量；以患者为中心的护理的加强；患者与健康专业人员之间的信息交流；知情同意和共同决策。“医生”这一健康专业类别贡献了大部分文章（N = 81），其余文章（N = 28）属于其他健康专业。109篇论文中有28篇（25.7%）提到了听力损失；18篇仅在文本背景中提及听力损失，5篇将听力损失作为排除标准，3篇是关联研究结果，只有2项研究包含干预措施。
尽管与年龄相关的听力损失患病率很高，但我们证明，在所有健康专业中，关于健康专业人员与老年患者沟通的研究中，很少有研究在其研究设计或分析中将听力损失作为一个变量纳入。此外，缺乏专门针对旨在减轻听力损失对临床沟通影响的干预措施的研究。
