There is overwhelming evidence that the needs of deaf people and people with hearing loss are not being met by NHS healthcare services. Here we share two stories that bring this issue to life, showing the huge impact of being unable to access healthcare. Caitlin shares her experiences as both a nurse and a patient as a deaf person in Wales....
✦ The floor
Discussion
Signed responses from readers of the wire.
No actionable change to clinical practice; these patient stories serve as qualitative advocacy evidence and are a useful reminder for clinicians to proactively assess communication needs at every appointment.
Collated patient narratives from a major UK charity provide a human-centred evidence base for the case that NHS services are routinely failing deaf and hard-of-hearing patients, lending weight to calls for policy reform.
- 01RNID gathered first-hand stories from deaf and hard-of-hearing NHS patients to document unmet needs.
- 02Stories illustrate specific barriers: communication failures, lack of interpreters, and inaccessible appointment formats.
- 03Content is qualitative and anecdotal; no quantitative outcome data are presented.
- 04Primarily functions as advocacy material to support policy change rather than clinical guidance.
- 05Relevant for UK audiologists and hearing healthcare providers seeking to understand patient experience gaps.
NHS services routinely fail to meet the communication and information needs of deaf people and those with hearing loss.
quotepartially supported