Abstract
Purpose: Service providers must identify and assess older adults who have concurrent vision and hearing loss, or dual sensory impairment (DSI). An assessment tool suitable for this purpose is the interRAI Community Health Assessment (CHA) and its Deafblind Supplement. This study's goal was to explore this assessment's administration process and to generate suggestions for assessors to help them optimize data collection.Methods: A social worker with experience working with adults who have sensory loss, who was also naïve to the interRAI CHA, administered the assessment with 200 older adults (65+) who had visual and/or hearing loss. The assessor evaluated the utility of the instrument for clinical purposes, focusing on sections relevant to identifying/characterizing adults with DSI.Results: Suggestions include the recommendation to ask additional questions regarding the person's functional abilities. This will help assessors deepen their understanding of the person's sensory status. Recommendations are also provided regarding sensory impairments and rehabilitation, in a general sense, to help assessors administer the interRAI CHA.Conclusions: Suggestions will help assessors to deepen their knowledge about sensory loss and comprehensively understand the assessment's questions, thereby allowing them to optimize the assessment process and increase their awareness of sensory loss in older adults.
Highlights
There is an ongoing rise in the prevalence of dual sensory impairment (DSI), defined as the combination of any level of concurrent vision and hearing loss irrespective of age of onset [1]
Sensory health only becomes the focus once the Deafblind Supplement (DbS) has been triggered during the administration of the Community Health Assessment (CHA); it has been the clinical experience of our team members that individuals who administer the CHA do not automatically consider potential administration barriers that may be present before a sensory impairment has been detected or identified
Given the unique professional experience of the assessor and her unusual experience of administering 200 interRAI CHA assessments to individuals with objectively confirmed sensory impairment, we explored different analytical approaches in order to frame our analyses
Summary
There is an ongoing rise in the prevalence of dual sensory impairment (DSI), defined as the combination of any level of concurrent vision and hearing loss irrespective of age of onset [1]. The prevalence of DSI increases with increasing age, and estimates vary among diverse. Given the correlation between aging and sensory impairment, it is estimated that as many as one in three individuals over the age of 50 have either reduced vision, impaired hearing, or DSI [1]. Rehabilitation services for sensory loss are available, such as those in Montreal, Canada, where 69% of clients receiving services for DSI are over the age of 64 [7]
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