Hearing & vision support to improve quality of life for people living with dementia in residential aged care

It’s estimated that 90 per cent of people living in aged care have a hearing impairment – but only about 15 per cent use hearing aids. Half also experience vision loss.

Hearing and vision loss also commonly co-occurs with dementia but can go undetected because the symptoms are masked by the presence of dementia.

In addition, communication breakdowns may be dismissed as dementia when an individual may have an underlying hearing impairment that hasn’t been managed.

Sense-Cog Aged Care (Australia) is conducting a new study which hopes to change this. The study aims to improve hearing and vision support for people living in residential aged care, including those living with mild cognitive impairment or dementia.

Research Coordinator, Dr Carly Meyer, said Sense-Cog Aged Care was pleased to be partnering with

Brightwater on Phase 1 of the study to develop and implement a sensory support intervention involving:

• training staff to assist with day-today hearing and vision device use

• regular hearing and vision screening

• improved communication practices

• adapting the sensory environment (e.g., lighting, noise reduction)

“It’s important to us that the intervention we develop meets the needs of residents and is feasible for aged care staff to carry out alongside their many other priorities,” Carly said.

During the first phase, researchers will work closely with aged care staff to understand the factors that help or hinder their ability to carry out behaviours, as well as feasible solutions to addressing these barriers.

“We will then develop the sensory intervention in partnership with residential aged care staff from Brightwater, hearing and vision professionals, and consumer representatives,” she added.

It is anticipated that the sensory intervention will be rolled out later this year in some Brightwater care homes and the study will evaluate the intervention’s impact on the quality of life of residents. The overall wellbeing of residents and their carers will also be evaluated.

The project will be seeking volunteers to enrol in the study with information to be shared around August.

Principal Investigator Professor Piers Dawes said poor sensory function worsened quality of life and exacerbated the impact of dementia by making communication more difficult.

“It can also lead to reduced social engagement, increased dependency, disorientation and increased costs of care,” he said.

Tips for carers to support individuals with poor hearing or vision:

• Always gain the resident’s attention before starting a conversation

• Mute the TV when having a conversation

• Always face the resident when speaking –they need to see you to hear you

• Document the hearing and vision preferences of residents. If they own hearing or low vision devices, check that they are working and encourage the resident to use them

• If you notice a change in mood, consider if changes in hearing or vision function might be a contributing factor

“Through this project we aim to improve quality of life for people with hearing/vision difficulties by working with residents, aged care and hearing/vision professionals to enable better ways of identifying and supporting hearing/vision needs.”

Dr Meyer added that research demonstrated that a project was more likely to be successful if parties worked together to design all aspects of the research and to design the intervention together from the outset.

“But then the rest of the intervention development will happen purely with Brightwater,” she said.

“We know that context is very important. The key success drivers within Brightwater might be very different to other aged care providers. So, we are going to be developing the intervention only with Brightwater and implementing it only with Brightwater – a bespoke response for each organisation’s needs.

“And if it’s successful, which we hope it will be, it will create a model that we can follow with other aged care providers.”