Has anyone here ever been in hospital, and experienced good or bad deaf awareness? How do or did you cope with explaining to the multitudes of people that you came across that you are deaf [0].
I have had over 45 general anaesthetics, 50 hospital stays and countless out-patient appointments with doctors, nurses, physios, audiologists etc. I have to say until recently the audiologists had the worst deaf-awareness of the lot of them. I have also had to advocate for my partner when she was hospitalised which was extremely stressful.
As a child I realise I benefitted greatly from one of my parents, or other family members/friends being around virtually 24/7 while I was in hospital AND the ‘patronising’ way in which adults often speak to children. My parents made up a sign which said something along the lines of “Natalya is deaf, she cannot hear anything without her hearing aid. Please ensure she has her hearing aid on, and that you are speaking clearly while facing her”…
As an adult my experiences have been very variable:
I’ve had Mr Maxillofacial-Cranky[0] who I saw privately (dad’s work private medical insurance++) twice to check my tinnitus and TMJ were not something more sinister. At the first appointment he couldn’t have been nicer - he must have thought there might be a paper in it. The second appointment was appalling. He was examining my mouth and jaw, his face so close to mine I couldn’t see him. I couldn’t understand what he wanted me to do, so instead of repeating himself he decided to YANK my jaw to where he wanted it. My partner eventually started repeating the instructions extremely clearly and audibly as she was across the room. Mr Maxillofacial-Cranky didn’t like this intrusion and complained at her to stop - which she ignored. Maybe I should have bitten his fingers! *gnash gnish*
In contrast Mr Polite-Orthopaedic surgeon couldn’t have been clearer, politer or had a better bedside manner as it were. The first appointment lasted over an hour, where for the first time in my life I met a doctor whose reaction to my shoulder was “Oh cool, so how does this work then”. He has one of those posher than BBC accents, and used terms like “One would do” or “One would think” which in many people would be pretentious, but in him was somehow appropriate. He spoke quite slowly, clearly and in a consistent way, if I didn’t hear him he just repeated it and didn’t make a fuss.
Unlike his boss, Mr Rude-Orthopaedic surgeon who was rude, cranky and got aggressive with me in a multi-disciplinary consultation. He tried to examine me while standing behind me and muttering longwinded and complicated instructions at me. He then interrogated me by asking very long and strangely formulated sentences. Everytime I tried to answer what I thought he was asking he would cut me off and tell me that I wasn’t answering his question. After a bit of this I was quite distressed, as I didn’t know if I was not hearing, mishearing or just being plain stupid. Mr Polite-Orthopaedic surgeon eventually intervened, getting his boss to back off, and rephrasing some of the questions much more appropriately.
Mr ENT has always been excellent, occasionally he forgets to face me, but never blames me for his small lapses in deaf awareness. He has one of those received English accents and is quite audible - as he should be dealing with ENT all day. Sadly all but one of his underlings are currently crap and foreign so doubly difficult to hear. The nurses in this department have been laughably bad, inaudible, stupid, incompetant for 18 years, and despite having ‘deaf people’ clinics they have no visual alerting system. I really ought to DDA the hospital on that one. I must ask the nurses to leave the consulting room next time they decide to have a chat while I’m trying to hear Mr ENT.
When my partner was hospitalised two years ago, we had had very little sleep for a week because of the pain she was in - that no one would believe she had. My partner was finally hospitalised, given fluids, potassium and vicodin like painkillers which zonked her out, but didn’t kill most of the pain. As no one knew what was wrong with her she was visited by various doctors, nurses and other people prodding and poking her.
Apart from the last surgeon who was clear and audible not one of the doctors had any deaf awareness worth a damn. One got really pissy when I asked her to repeat herself, as I had been shoved to the back of the room to let all her entourage in to look, poke and prod my partner. No one told us what was going on, and I think that was exacerbated by me not being able to hear what was going on. Fortunately the nurses were very good, and I managed to corner one immediately after her shift started so I could find out what she’d been told in briefing. I found people only believed I was deaf the few times my partner heard something that I didn’t and tried to sign it for me so I understood. Whenever we used sign, people remembered that I couldn’t hear and spoke louder and clearer to both of us.
What do you do when you are in hospital yourself, or with a family member who needs you to advocate for them. What things work, and what don’t? Do you always take someone with you to assist with communication, or just hope that the staff aren’t crap?
[0] - Replace with ‘partially sighted’ if appropriate, I’m interested in your stories too.
[1] - In the UK surgeons are referred to as ‘Mr’ rather than ‘Dr’ this is due to some historical thing. A female surgeon is ‘Miss’ regardless of her marital status as far as I know.
