School-Entry Hearing Screening: An Audit of Referrals in a Three Year Period

Abstract

A recent National Health and Medical Council (NHMRC) project reviewed the literature on child health screening and surveillance and concluded that there was insufficient evidence to make a recommendation for or against school-entry hearing screening. However, unrecognised and unmanaged hearingimpairment can have a significant detrimental effect on a child's educational, social and psychological progress. In the Hornsby and Kuringgai local government areas in New South Wales (NSW), a longstanding school-entry hearing screening program that aims to identify previously unsuspected hearing problems, is conducted each year. Strict program guidelines are in place, and subject to review. In view of the NHMRC findings, it was decided that an audit of audiology referrals from the Hornsby and Kuringgai local government areas' screening program was timely. Accordingly, records of school-entry hearing screening for the calendar years 2000, 2001 and 2002 were obtained from the School Medical Service team, and all records of audiology assessment identifiable as School Medical Service referrals to audiology for the same years extracted from the Audiology Unit files. The audiology assessments were categorised to be comparable with data previously reported in the literature, and compared with the school-entry screening information. The resulting data have been analysed in order to evaluate the program's effectiveness. While areas requiring improvement emerged, the number of relevant children identified compared with the number referred suggests that the program definitely has value and warrants consideration to repeating elsewhere.