Hearing loss may be an overlooked problem in physician communication with older patients

"Can you hear me now?" It’s not only a line from those old Verizon commercials, it’s a question doctors should ask their older patients.

If older patients have trouble understanding what a doctor is telling them, physicians should ask whether the person can hear them, a new study suggests.

Few studies that looked at doctor communication with older patients consider that hearing loss may have a negative effect on the interaction, according to the study published in the Journal of the American Geriatrics Society. That’s despite the fact that hearing loss is common in older adults—one-quarter of adults aged 60-69 and 80% of adults aged 80 and older have disabling hearing loss—but only about one in five adults with hearing loss wears a hearing aid.

That creates the potential for poor communication with healthcare providers, researchers said. In only one of 67 studies reviewed did researchers offer patients some kind of hearing assistance, which improved patients’ understanding.

"Hearing loss has long been neglected in the medical community. As a geriatrician, I see many patients who struggle to hear what I'm saying to them. That makes me less certain that they are getting what they need,” Joshua Chodosh, M.D., of New York University School of Medicine, one of the study’s authors, said in an announcement.

An accompanying editorial said doctors can adopt common sense and low- or no-cost strategies to improve communication with patients who have either hearing or vision loss.

For example, by minimizing background noise, speaking face-to-face with patients and creating education materials with large print, doctors could improve communication, said Frank Lin, M.D., of the Johns Hopkins School of Medicine, and Heather Whitson, M.D., of the Duke University School of Medicine.

Doctors listening with empathy to a patient’s concerns is another way to improve communication.