It is important for service providers to ask clients about the service they deliver and the benefits that clients perceive they obtain from their service.
Late last year, questionnaires which are internationally benchmarked, were sent to over 22,500 Australian Hearing adults with complex communication needs, with more than 8,000 responses received from a variety of clients from all over Australia, including 1,737 clients over 90 years of age!
While previous surveys focused on clients with a severe-profound hearing loss in the better ear, all adults with complex communication needs were included this time around.
53% of respondents were female, and 47% male. Although the majority of these clients wear hearing aids, many have also been fitted with an implantable device such as a Cochlear Implant (16%) or an Implantable Bone Conduction Device (1%).
Results are still being analysed in terms of device satisfaction and usage, and will be compared with those from previous Community Service Obligation Adult surveys.
We are also about to investigate the hearing device use, benefit and satisfaction for young Australians under 26 years of age, by surveying the young clients themselves or their parents and carers. Surveys will be sent to approximately 20,000 clients in January.
For our Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander clients, particularly for those who speak a language other than English at home, we needed to develop an individual client survey about satisfaction with our services and with any amplification fitted.
Feedback has included that 77% of clients wear their devices most of the day, 93% say they hear quite a bit better or a lot better and 88% said they were able to enjoy time with family and friends more. That rate of data collection is increasing with the increasing use of tablet technology for data collection.
It is important to shape services according to the client’s experience and this data will be the largest ever collected in this field.