Hearing Loss in the Elderly: A Proposal for Intervention in Primary Health Care

Abstract

To evaluate the performance of professionals regarding knowledge about hearing loss in the elderly, through theoretical and practical training by a speech therapist. An intervention study was carried out with 87 Primary Health Care professionals in a municipality of Brazil. A survey of the participants’ knowledge related to hearing loss was performed using a data collection instrument composed of items related to both sociodemographic conditions and specific questions concerning the topic. This instrument was applied in two stages: before training and after training. The participants’ performance in relation to knowledge about hearing health was estimated by subtracting the post-training score from that obtained in pre-training. Participants were classified in higher performance (≥4 points) and lower performance (<4 points) groups. Other variables were collected: sex, age, occupation, schooling level, and length of professional service in health. The performance comparison estimated mean and the 95% confidence interval were calculated by the aforementioned variables using Student’s t-test. A comparison of these variables with higher performance was conducted using the X2 test with a significance level of 5%. After training, there was an increase in the average performance of about 30% ( p < .01). The highest performance was more frequent among professionals who reported having high school and below levels of education ( p < .01) and who were community health agents ( p = .01). The performance of the professionals regarding their knowledge about screening for hearing loss increased. The training showed low complexity and was feasible for health professionals.