Tuesday, 9 July 2024

We started the meeting by welcoming a new member, Laura.

Kate gave a brief update of some things that have happened since our last meeting. We co-developed an article that we submitted as a rapid response to an article in the BMJ called The importance of British Sign Language. We were invited to submit a shorter version to be published as a letter which was published last week – great news!

Kate outlined the meeting objectives which were to:

• discuss ways USAIS can improve communication with patients at all points of contact
• discuss findings from How do you see your deafness survey
• discuss other ongoing research projects

For our first objective, Dr Sarah Worsfold from USAIS led a discussion about how USAIS can improve communication with patients at all points of contact. Sarah outlined how USAIS has been running and highlighted the need to improve communication, particularly with older adults as the average patient age now is 72 years old. Sarah wanted to hear from ideas from our group members about how USAIS could make their communications more easily accessible and meaningful to service users from their first contact with us and at each following contact. The group provided some great feedback and ideas. Next, Kate briefly highlighted some the data from the survey we did in our meeting in April. The data emphasised how diverse our group was in terms of experiences of deafness and hearing loss.

Callum Findlay, an ENT doctor and researcher in our group followed by discussing his project ideas and the progress he has made so far building a database called AudiLog.

Finally, Kate briefly mentioned CIICA – (Cochlear implant international community of action) which is a global network for people who had a cochlear implant. We have been invited to co-write something about ALL_EARS@UoS for the website to highlight what we are doing. We are looking for a couple of volunteers to co-write this with us.

The meeting closed with Kate and Tracey thanking everyone for coming and sharing their ideas throughout.