Working With People That Are Losing Their Hearing

By Rey Vetangelo


There are many professional settings in which you may find yourself working with elderly clients. When you are working with a lot of elderly clients, you should understand the importance of being sensitive to hearing loss and reacting well to your clients hearing loss.

Home modification for seniors is an extremely common occurrence as it allows individuals and aging couples to remain living in their own home instead of having to move into an assisted living home to help them perform their daily tasks. As age begins to interfere with the daily lives of the seniors living independently, it becomes apparent that changes are needed, but what specific changes or modifications to the home can be done to improve the quality of live for those living within the home?

When you are speaking to someone that is struggling with hearing loss, you want to make sure that you are as clear as you can be. This means that you will want to talk to them face to face to ensure they are able to use your body language and your lips to interpret what you are saying.

Because of the difficulty of becoming deaf in a world that is largely hearing, many advancements have been made to improve the hearing of deaf individuals. And over time, these inventions have consistently improved and will continue to improve.

Hearing aids were some of the earliest inventions in regard to a person's hearing. Initially these aids were as simple as a funnel that directed sound into the inner ear, and eventually they improved to be an electronic aid, small enough to be concealed in the human ear. And after hearing aids were improved, the cochlear implant was invented to help individuals to hear.

Cochlear implants consist of a few essential parts. First, a microphone that picks up sound from the world. Second, a processor which is used to distinguish sounds from one another. Third, a transmitter that takes the data from the processor and converts it to electrical impulses. Fourth, an electrode array that stimulates the auditory nerve to create the sensation of sound. This does not, in fact, replicate normal hearing, but it does create the ability for an individual to experience a representation of sound.

Although this may be a great way to save your time and save your clients time, when you are dealing with a client that has hearing loss you will need to slow it down. Make sure that you speak in short and simple sentences and you are not rushing what you are saying.

One's home is an extremely difficult thing to part with, and this difficulty only becomes deeper as one ages within the home.

Trying to avoid speaking on the phone may be your best option. Talking face to face as often as possible is a great way to ensure that nothing is going to be lost in translation and that everything that you need to convey is going to be heard and understood properly. Working with clients that have hearing loss may require a little extra effort on your part, but it is important that you do what you can to make sure your client understands. With a little extra patience and time, you can tap into a target market that you may not have been able to communicate with before.




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