Assistive Listening Knowledge Base
  • Peer-reviewed study (qualitative interviews)

Barriers and facilitators in using personal hearing amplifiers from the perspective of healthcare providers

From https://assistivelisteningknowledgebase.org/evidence/arora-2026-personal-hearing-amplifiers/ · record checked 10 October 2026

  • Arora MA, Xu J, Kokorelias KM, Koerber R, Krishnapillai H, Sinha SK
  • Canadian Geriatrics Journal 29(3):173-179

Independent (Sinai Health and University Health Network, Toronto, and the University of Toronto; funded by the Healthy Ageing and Geriatrics Program Research Fund and Summer Scholars Research Program of Sinai Health and University Health Network and a medical-student summer research programme; the authors declare no conflicts of interest)

Summary

Interviews with 33 staff and volunteers at a Toronto teaching hospital about why the personal hearing amplifiers its units hold for older patients go unused.

Key findings

  • Between July and August 2023 the authors interviewed 33 geriatricians, nurses, other allied health professionals and volunteers from units at Mount Sinai Hospital, Toronto, that had received Pocketalker amplifiers in 2021, and analysed the interviews thematically; 13 participants checked the preliminary findings.
  • Participants saw the amplifiers as valuable but underused. They described easier conversations, among them one about a patient's capacity to refuse care. Amplifiers got used when one was already at the bedside and working; one nurse said that without one already there, the nurse had never tried to start using one.
  • Barriers included devices kept out of sight (one in a cupboard reached with a stool), time spent searching other units, devices taken away and not returned, and geriatricians paying for their own; no one was clearly responsible for batteries, headphones, repairs or replacement.
  • Participants described no uniform hospital-wide system for retrieving, cleaning, storing and returning the devices, and one geriatrician asked whether there are cleaning procedures staff need to know about. A social worker described putting on protective equipment to see a patient in isolation before finding that the patient could not hear.
  • The authors suggest strategic placement, standard protocols, designated roles, training, and recording hearing loss and device use in the medical record. In their introduction they write, citing earlier studies, that hearing loss affects at least two-thirds of hospitalised older adults and that personal hearing amplifiers consistently improved patient-provider communication.

Limits

One hospital; most participants were nurses, volunteers may have been those most interested in the devices, no audiologists or speech-language pathologists took part, and no patients were interviewed. Data were collected after the COVID-19 pandemic, when, the authors note, infection control procedures may have shaped views. The study reports perceptions, not measured use or outcomes.

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cgjonline.ca/index.php/cgj/article/view/932

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Cite this source

Arora MA, Xu J, Kokorelias KM, Koerber R, Krishnapillai H, Sinha SK. Barriers and facilitators in using personal hearing amplifiers from the perspective of healthcare providers. Canadian Geriatrics Journal 29(3):173-179. 2 September 2026. https://cgjonline.ca/index.php/cgj/article/view/932 (accessed 10 October 2026).

The accessed date is when this library last checked the link; use the date you read it. To point readers to this summary instead, link to https://assistivelisteningknowledgebase.org/evidence/arora-2026-personal-hearing-amplifiers/

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