The Secret Deafie: Why do audiology services still fail deaf people?

We’ve all seen so many pieces on the Limping Chicken about the front line failings of Audiology services (patients having their names called from behind, audiologists with beards… these are quite minor examples!).

As someone who relies on these services heavily, I’ve always tried to look on the bright side, but recently things seem to have become even worse! It almost feels like they are trying to make it as difficult as possible for deaf people to access the services we need…

I have been profoundly deaf since childhood and my main means of communication is lip-reading. I wear two of the most powerful hearing-aids available. This helps me to know when someone is trying to get my attention, but I cannot actually hear any detail.

I was born hearing, but as I grew older my hearing got steadily worse and by the time I reached adulthood my local hospital-based Audiology Department was already struggling to meet my needs.

However, I had never known anything different so I assumed that this was the best service that I could expect. For many personal reasons I do not want cochlear implants but every time I went to Audiology, whatever the reason, I was told I should have a cochlear implant, and their body-language shouted their impatience at me when I said, “No”.

Then, one day, I got a letter from Audiology saying that they had lost a contract with NHS England and that my support would now be via a commercial retailer. 

I had no hope that they were going to be able to cope with a profoundly deaf customer that needed exactly-fitting ear moulds due to the high power of the hearing aids! 

Those guys are there to make a profit, and though they probably do a great job for the majority of people with moderate or even severe hearing-loss, they can’t look at individual cases in the same way.

Suddenly the hospital’s Audiology Department, despite all their faults, were looking much more competent than this new retailer! I thought perhaps it was time to look for other options, instead of just taking those that were given to me.

Time for some research and letter-writing – after a LOT of looking-around I discovered that there was a Regional Audiology Service that covered my area and I managed to get a referral.  Wow, what a difference!  At first assessment I said, “I don’t want CI’s”. 

The reply was, “OK, fair enough” and to this day nobody has ever pushed me that way again. The service is great, they have lots of experience with people as deaf as me (at my home hospital I was the deafest customer they had), do ear moulds that fit first time and tune my aids like they have never been tuned before! However… it is quite far away!

The sixty-mile round trip to the centre is a bit of a pain, but the benefits were worth it and, of course, I didn’t have to travel sixty miles for batteries – I could still get them locally. Well, that WAS the case until last month.

Then, apparently, the rules changed – despite what it says on the NHS England website you can now only get batteries from the region where you are registered as a patient, even if that is not local to you.

Thanks NHS – great cost-saving measure – I’m still going to need the same number of batteries but now I have to either travel sixty miles to get them or pay double-postage (I have to send a self-addressed envelope for the batteries to be sent to me in).

And the NHS have to pay someone to open my letter, get the batteries, put them in the envelope and post it back to me. Doesn’t seem all that cost-effective actually!

Oh well, I suppose that it keeps the Royal Mail employees in a job!

Read more Secret Deafie anonymous articles by deaf people here.