Which of the following nursing interventions would be most likely to facilitate effective communication with a hearing-impaired client?

Question

A) Ask the client to repeat what was said in order to evaluate understanding.
B) Stand directly in front of the client to facilitate lip reading.
C) Reduce environmental noise and distractions before communicating.
D) Raise the voice to project sound at a higher frequency.

Answer 1

Ans: C
Feedback: Communication with the hearing impaired can be facilitated by talking in a quiet space free of competing noise stimuli and other distractions. Asking the client to repeat what was said is likely to provoke frustration in the client. A more effective strategy would be to repeat the question or statement choosing different words. Raising the voice to project sound at higher frequency would make understanding more difficult. The nurse cannot assume that the client reads lips. If the client does read lips, on average he or she will understand only 50% of words accurately.