Dementia patients living in care homes accessing audiology services -1
Research type
Research Study
Full title
Opinions on the barriers and facilitators for patients with dementia in care homes accessing help for hearing loss; exploration of the permeability and organisation of services.
IRAS ID
226955
Contact name
Scott Richards
Contact email
Sponsor organisation
Aston University
Duration of Study in the UK
0 years, 4 months, 31 days
Research summary
Due to the ageing population, there are more individuals that have age-related hearing problems. There are also more people with dementia living in care homes. Dementia is a condition that can affect your ability to make decisions or raise concerns for yourself, therefore, when considering access to healthcare we must be aware of the additional challenges that may be involved for dementia patients. Most of the time the responsibility to access healthcare will be placed on care staff or relatives.
This study aims to identify key themes that arise in relation to the barriers and facilitators when accessing help for hearing loss for dementia people living in care homes. Organisation of healthcare services is based around many platforms and levels of structure. However, this study will focus on two aspects; permeability to the ease of use of audiology services for this particular group of patients and the organisation of these services. Ideally a larger number of departments would be involved but that is beyond the scope of this present research. Staff from the audiology department at The Royal United Hospital in Bath and two care homes also in Bath will be involved in this study.
Opinions of audiologists, care home staff and relatives of people living in care homes who have dementia will be gathered using interviews. Interviews will be of an open style to allow people to openly talk about the topics and raise any new themes. Interviews will be conducted until no new themes are being identified. The data gathered will be analysed to look for common themes that arise from the different groups of people interviewed. This study will act as a basis for future work carried out on a larger scale.
REC name
Yorkshire & The Humber - Leeds East Research Ethics Committee
REC reference
17/YH/0444
Date of REC Opinion
20 Dec 2017
REC opinion
Favourable Opinion