Purpose
to evaluate the skills of handling the type of hearing aids in open fit hearing impaired elderly people, using the instrument called Practical Hearing Aid Skills Test (PHAST).
Methods
in the study, developed in Auditory Health Division, including 18 elderly (aged 60 to 87 years) hearing impaired, 7 men and 11 women, new users of open fit hearing aid type. For the methodology, the first step the researcher carried out the guidance on hearing aids for the hearing impaired and the second, after approximately 1 month of use of the device, applied the instrument PHAST, which contains eight questions in the form of practical tasks regarding the handling of hearing aids to classify the resourcefulness of the individual.
Results
we found that the tasks related to cleaning the hearing aid and the use of telephone, the subjects experienced greater difficulty in exposing them to run with lower scores, however the tasks related to the removal of HA and opening the battery compartment, subjects performed with greater ease. As for the overall performance of the participants, the results were 33,33% excellent, 22,22% good, 27,78% satisfactory and 16,67% poor.
Conclusion
55,55% of hearing impaired elderly performed the tasks for properly handling the open fit hearing aids, obtaining the final ranking instrument PHAST excellent or good.
Hearing Loss; Aged; Hearing Aids
