A workshop for medical students on deafness and hearing impairments

There is a current need to improve health care delivery to deaf and hearing-impaired persons. The author designed an educational workshop for medical students and others as an initial step to address this need. The workshop was offered electively during 1997 and 1998 to first-year and second-year medical students at Dalhousie University, Nova Scotia, Canada. The workshop involved a broad, multidisciplinary scope, may have been the first of its kind in Canada, and is still one of the few documented ways to approach medical education about deafness and hearing impairments. Attendees explored general information on hearing impairments, communication between the hearing-impaired patient and his or her physician, and multi-cultural, technological, and ethical aspects of caring for hearing-impaired patients. There was an initial questionnaire, group exercises, lectures, student interviews of volunteer deaf "patients," discussions, and a "hands-on" materials display. The workshop was a low-cost and easily reproducible method of educating medical students about hearing impairments. If found to be educationally effective through future research, this type of workshop may foster better care to deaf and hearing-impaired persons by inclusion into medical school and continuing education curricula.