Project Description:
What? Caring for Deaf Patients simulation project is one of five subprojects at Ohio State. In partnership with the Ohio Department of Medicaid (ODM) and the Medicaid Technical Assistance and Policy Program (MEDTAPP), the Ohio Colleges of Medicine Government Resource Center (GRC) awarded Sheryl Pfeil of the OSU College of Medicine a total of $1,965,740 for 5 subprojects for the Medicaid Equity Simulation (MES) project to create online virtual simulated patient experiences for Ohio Medicaid healthcare providers.
1. Deaf patients are especially underserved and marginalized in health care settings. Deaf patients have three types of barriers to quality health care. First, communication difficulties with health care providers lead to fear, mistrust, and frustration among Deaf patients as well as to misunderstandings about their diagnosis and treatment. Poor communication was associated with lower satisfaction with health care quality and access and more preventative adverse events in acute care settings. Health care providers may be surprised to learn that lip reading, even among the most proficient Deaf patients, only conveys about 30-45% of information. Reliance on note writing for communication is constrained by deficits in reading level and health literacy among Deaf patients. Deaf patients often have a limited fund of health information. Patients who were born deaf or lost hearing prelingually had no access to incidentally occurring health information from family members, radio, television, or public health service campaigns. Unlike their hearing siblings, they often have no information about their family health history. Even Deaf adults with a high school or college education had low health literacy and had a similar understanding of medical terms as non-English speaking immigrants. Finally, Deaf patients with other minoritized identities (e.g., race, ethnicity, gender identity, LGBTQIA, etc.) are at a higher risk of marginalization and health risks.
2. The goal of this project is develop a virtual simulation training following two Deaf characters through their respective healthcare appointments. The simulation will be delivered to 50 Medicaid providers in Ohio by the end of SFY22 and 200 Medicaid providers by the end of SFY23. The learning objectives are as follows: - Demonstrate communication strategies to best meet the needs of the patient, seeking out and implementing resources, including interpreter services, to communicate effectively. - Respond competently to patient's language, race, ethnicity, sexual orientation, gender identity and expression, health literacy, and other cultural identities. Demonstrate awareness of intersecting marginalized identities. - Recognize and mitigate implicit biases when working with Deaf and hard of hearing patients. - Use clear language and patient handouts that are at an appropriate level of health literacy when communicating with patients. - Promote health and function of the patient by encouraging healthy behaviors. (weight management, exercise, diet, smoking cessation, etc.) - Assess the social environment of the patient to understand the impact of significant relationships and social networks on health outcomes of the patient.
3. Learners will follow the stories of two characters, interact with hotspots in a 360 environment, watch brief testimonials from healthcare providers and DHH individuals, and receive debriefs and resources to learn about barriers that DHH patients face in receiving quality healthcare, and how to provide effective communication. This project is exciting in that it uses features of virtual and augmented reality to create an interactive experience, and it was developed with consultant from healthcare providers and Deaf and HoH community members.
4. With meaningful training, health care providers can become more competent and comfortable providing quality health care to Deaf patients.
Keyword(s):
Deaf, hard of hearing, Medicaid, healthcare provider training
