Abstract
Introduction: This study investigated to see if correlations existed between the number of follow-ups appointments a patient attended and self-perceived hearing aid satisfaction.Methods: Participants (N = 50) were recruited from a private practice clinic in Elk Grove, California. Participants over the age of 55 with bilateral mild to moderately-severe sensorineural hearing loss who have used hearing aids for at least 6 months. The study used a convergent mixed methods design, qualitatively, we analyzed how the patients’ needs were addressed during their follow-up appointments by assessing patients’ clinic chart notes starting from their hearing aid fitting visit to all their follow-up notes regarding the troubleshooting, counseling, and services provided/actions taken by the provider in response to the patients needs. We quantitatively analyzed participants' answers to surveys helped us to determine the participants’ self-perceived hearing aid satisfaction. Responses were obtained in the form of paper surveys and/or Qualtrics surveys which included questionnaires: HHIE, IOI-HA, and ALDQ.
Results: This comprehensive approach (quantitative + qualitative analyses) allowed us to evaluate the strength of relationships between variables, determine the sensitivity of our analysis to detect these relationships and ascertain the sample size required to achieve adequate statistical power for future investigations. Our qualitative results emphasize that complaints that patients come in for are almost always resolvable, and follow-up appointments are helpful and allow for the Audiologist to address patient concerns in a timely manner. Quantitative data analysis investigated the relationship variable of 'Follow-Up Visits' and dependent variables of occurrence, importance in everyday life, emotional effects, social effects, daily use, hearing aid benefit, residual activity limitations, satisfaction, residual participation restriction, impact on others and quality of life.
Conclusion: We analyzed using both Spearman and Kendall correlation coefficients. Based on the results, we found no statistically significant correlations between 'Follow-Up Visits' and any of the dependent variables.