Effectiveness of Active Communication Education (ACE) to improve hearing aids adherence and successful adaptation for older adults using hearing aids in Primary Health Care Centers (PHCs): a multicenter, triple-blind randomized clinical trial
Age-associated hearing loss in older adult users of hearing aids implemented in the Chilean public health service.
The experimental group will take part in the Chilean adaptation of the ACE program, which will comprise six sessions, one a week, lasting 90 minutes each. In the first session, the program, its rules, and how it works will be described. The participants in each group will introduce themselves and tell their hearing loss story. They will also talk generally about hearing in old age and the national public policy charged with supplying hearing aids. In the second session, the communication needs of the participants will be analyzed and strategies to resolve the communication problems identified by the members of the group will be discussed. In the third session, anticipatory communication strategies, as well as maintenance and repair techniques and explanations, will be dealt with, as well as how these could be applied and reinforced in everyday situations. The fourth session will deal with understanding speech in noisy environments, identifying everyday situations with these characteristics and how to overcome them. In the fifth session, communication with difficult speakers and useful strategies for these cases will be tackled. The sixth session will deal with difficulties with hearing other sources of sound, such as telephones, televisions, and doorbells. The usefulness of lip-reading will also be discussed and strategies for how to recognize the viseme associated with the expressive facial movements of certain sounds will be looked at. The control group will receive a group intervention created especially for this study as a placebo, carried out by a speech therapist. This intervention will last the same amount of time and have the same weekly frequency as the experimental intervention. It will have a structured form, a traditional/demonstrative approach, and a passive-receptive methodology. During the first session, the functions of hearing aids and how national public policies aimed at people with hearing loss work will be explained. In the second session, age-
1.Seniors with hearing loss fitted with a hearing aid in at least one ear in the last five years implemented through the Chilean public health system. 2. A normal cognitive state, as shown by a score of ≥ 22 in the Chilean version of the Mini Mental State Examination (MMSE).
1. Loss or technical malfunctioning of the hearing aid.