Personal hearing amplifiers, or PHAs — devices that help people hear better but aren’t tailored to the user as are hearing aids — work well in healthcare clinics to help individuals hear what their care providers are saying during visits, although some obstacles to more widespread use remain, according to a new report.
Healthcare clinics typically purchase the devices to ensure that patients can hear everything being discussed during their visits. The devices are an option for people with hearing loss who, for whatever reason, do not wear hearing aids. A person can put them on during a visit with their doctor to make sure they hear everything being discussed, which is important, especially if they’re not joined by a family member, friend or aide.
The US Food and Drug Administration doesn’t classify PHAs as “over-the-counter hearing aids” and instead calls them “assistive listening devices.”
The researchers examined thousands of reports and zeroed in on 11 studies published from 1980 to 2022 that described the outcomes of using PHA in clinical settings. The studies consisted of surveys on clinicians’ awareness and use of PHAs, an evaluation of the acoustic output of a PHA device and reports of PHAs used as interventions in hearing loss.
On the whole, there were high levels of satisfaction with PHAs, and they consistently improved speech understanding, although care providers didn’t use the devices consistently. Challenges existed in terms of provider awareness, device maintenance and location tracking.
More research is needed to explore the challenges, the authors said in the report, which was published Feb. 1 in the Journal of the American Geriatrics Society.
Some of the issues that surround PHA use include integrating support from family members, educating providers about the devices so they know to make them available to patients (and know how to use them), and ensuring that people with cognitive impairments know to use the PHA and how to use the device. Another challenge is misplacing small devices in healthcare settings, so clinicians should look at better placement and fewer smaller parts, to name a few solutions, according to the report.
