Medical professionals with deaf patients

Medical professionals are usually committed to serving everyone. This includes deaf or hard of hearing patients. But how do you communicate over the phone with people who cannot hear? How do you communicate when they are in your office? Meanwhile, how do you ensure they understand your instructions after they leave? This guide can help medical professionals with deaf patients. It explains differences among deaf, hard of hearing, late-deafened, or oral deaf. The guide also explains different strategies and technologies you can use for communication.

Some of the advice is helpful for any patient in any country. For example, communication strategies that might help one person might not help another. Thus you should ask each individual to explain their own communication strategies. But some advice only helps people in the United States. Thus, you will want to talk with local deaf organizations in your country. For example, they can better explain how deaf people use the phone in your country. Or they can help you find sign language interpreters or other local services. So may they have more ideas to guide medical professionals with deaf patients.

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