جستجوی مقالات مرتبط با کلیدواژه « hearing impairments » در نشریات گروه « پزشکی »

Studies have indicated a considerable change in the trend of families’ adaptation to the hearing impairment of their children following the application of hearing screening programs in the past few years. This study was conducted in line with increased rehabilitation service quality and family-based intervention. It was performed to identify factors affecting the adaptation of mothers to hearing-impaired (HI) children with cochlear implants.

This qualitative-descriptive research was performed with a phenomenological approach and involved 16 mothers of two to seven-year-old HI children with cochlear implants. The research setting was the centers for speech therapy of HI children in Shiraz, Iran. Data were collected through in-depth interviews with the subjects, and data analysis was performed in MAXQDA (2018) using Colaizzi’s seven-step method.

The mean age of the subjects was 34 years, and the children of these parents were two to seven years old. The mean age of the earliest known diagnosis was 12 months. Moreover, the mean age at cochlear implantation was 2.5 years. Based on the subjects’ experiences, the researchers extracted factors affecting mothers’ adaptation, leading to four main themes. These factors facilitated mothers’ adaptation and included the quality of medical services, condition normalization, individual capabilities of mothers, and effective use of the environment.

Improving the quality of medical services, condition normalization, individual capabilities of mothers, and effective use of the environment led to an improvement in mothers’ adaptation to HI children with cochlear implants.

Given the importance of reducing barriers hindering the empowerment of mothers from contributing to the rehabilitation of hearing-impaired children with cochlear implants, the present study points to the direction of designing, adopting, and assessing a program that would lessen such barriers.

In this randomized controlled trial (RCT), participants were consecutively selected from individuals referring to speech-therapy centers serving hearing-impaired children in the Town of Shiraz (Iran). Intervention and control groups were established using randomized block selection (35 individuals per group). The parent-based intervention was adopted in 6 training sessions, each session lasting 80 minutes. A researcher-made questionnaire was employed to investigate empowerment barriers, while children’s speech skill was assessed using the Newsha scale.

Data collected from 35 intervention and 33 control group members were examined. Evaluation of primary and interactional effects of “time” and “group” shows time to have a meaningful effect on “parental discord” and “empowerment barrier” variables (P < 0.001). Time-group interaction also proved significant regarding effects on “difficulty working with hearing-impaired child” and “parents’ false beliefs”. Compared to the control group, the intervention group shows significant improvement across all variables at studied different time periods. Not to forget the immediate effects of time and group on the “speech skill” variable, which also proved significant (P = 0.001).

The results denote the effectiveness of the parent-based intervention on mothers’ empowerment and speech improvement in children with impaired hearing.