DEVELOPMENT AND EVALUATION OF COUNSELNG TOOLS FOR PREVENTING COMMUNICATION BARRIERS AMONG DIFFERENTLY ENABLED IN SPEAKING AND HEARING POPULATION

This study aims to develop and evaluate the counseling tools for effective communication between differently enabled in speaking and hearing population and the healthcare professionals that helps to provide better healthcare facilities that includes appropriate diagnosis, treatment rationalization and patient counseling. The main objectives in this study were to identify the participants, barriers and the factors associated with poor communication among the specifies populations. This study certainly reveals that a healthcare professional can fulfill this communication gap and could provide better health care service. It is recommended that every health care team must have a skilled professional (pharmacist, nurse, etc.,) to overcome these barriers. This study initiated with development of tools like pictorial and graphical, predominantly the sign language (Indian sign language) is the significant tool to communicate with the participants. A total of 106 members (above 13 years) were included and the major participants were from Priyadarshini Deaf and Dumb Ashramam, Rajamahendravaram and it was carried out for a period of 6 months (Feb 2016 to July 2016). To implement the tools two instruments 1 and 2 were developed; each instrument consists of a set of questions from specific topics. Preliminary test was conducted with instrument-1 without skilled healthcare professional intervention and the post test was conducted with instrument-2 after the professional intervention using the tools. A feedback has been taken from the participants to assess the healthcare professional skills. The results have been analyzed by the Pearson Chi-square test.