MM401 - Clinical Community Partnerships: Resources to Improve Patient Care

Abstract:
The Hearing Center at the UPMC Children’s Hospital of Pittsburgh serves more than 600 families each year and includes over 11,000 audiology outpatient visits. Processing the complicated emotions of a hearing loss diagnosis, navigating educational options, and finding support can be an overwhelming task for a family. Thanks to philanthropic funding, our Hearing Center was able to create an Educational Liaison position to help meet the needs of families outside of our clinic. This presentation will outline the role of this unique position and the benefits our clinic and families have experienced.

Summary:
Receiving a child’s diagnosis of hearing loss, whether anticipated or not, can be emotionally challenging for both patients and their families. Often, caregivers lack background knowledge of hearing loss and hearing healthcare (Hamzah et al., 2021). In addition to the shock and subsequent grief of the diagnosis, parents are quickly faced with time-sensitive decisions for their child to support language development and educational success. If a hearing loss diagnosis occurs in infancy or early childhood, parents will be faced with the initiation of Early Intervention or a related child development program (Ching and Leigh, 2021).  Parents of school-aged children with hearing loss may need to advocate for supportive educational services such as an Individualized Education Plan (IEP) (Khalsa and Chan, 2023).

At our center, we identified these challenges as areas where our families of children with hearing loss required additional support. Thanks to philanthropic funding, the role of an Educational Liaison was created in 2019. The addition of this position has empowered our patient families and reduced the burden on our clinical audiologists. We believe a similar position would be beneficial at other pediatric hearing clinics.

Our presentation will outline the specific role of our Educational Liaison. This includes in-house tasks such as one-on-one family consultations following a hearing loss diagnosis, one-on-one IEP training, and educating families on educational options and accommodations for their child. This role has also led to the creation of new programs and initiatives such as outreach programs for schools, free language therapy bags, a Hearing Center newsletter, and community events to foster connections between families of children with hearing loss.

Our Educational Liaison has strengthened our community partnerships with local educational audiologists, therapists, and related stakeholders. The qualitative feedback we have received thus far has highlighted the connection between these relationships and their positive impact on patient advocacy. To support the creation of similar positions at clinics across the country, our presentation will detail the role of this position, the collaboration between community partners, and the programs and initiatives that have been developed. Additionally, we will provide participants with links to access copies of select resources

References:

Ching, T. Y., & Leigh, G. (2020). Considering the impact of universal newborn hearing screening and early intervention on language outcomes for children with congenital hearing loss. Hearing, balance and communication, 18(4), 215-224.

Hamzah, N. F. A., Umat, C., Harithasan, D., & Goh, B. S. (2021). Challenges faced by parents when seeking diagnosis for children with sensorineural hearing loss. International journal of pediatric otorhinolaryngology, 143, 110656.

Khalsa, I. K., & Chan, D. K. (2023). Hearing Impairment and School Engagement Outcomes in US Children. JAMA Otolaryngology–Head & Neck Surgery.