Sunday, February 2, 2014

Cochlear Implant

By Rey Vetangelo


There are many professional settings in which you may find yourself working with elderly clients. When you are working with a lot of elderly clients, you should understand the importance of being sensitive to hearing loss and reacting well to your clients hearing loss.

In the hearing world, the world of deafness is often understood as a world of disability, but this is often not how it is perceived by members of the deaf community. Rather than seeing deafness as a disability, they understand it as a different way of perceiving the world, and this is extremely important to the maintenance of self worth.

This culture is particularly important for individuals who were born deaf, or became deaf at a young age. For individuals who lose their hearing later in life, this type of understanding is more difficult to achieve because they spent most of their lives in a very different community with different values and understandings.

When an individual cannot interpret what you are saying based on the volume of your language, you want to make sure that they have the other tools to use as well. Making sure that they have the other tools will ensure that you are able to be as clear and communicate clearly.

Another area of the home that seniors often struggle with, and that can be very dangerous if not addressed, is the bathroom. Here again due to the lack of mobility and muscle strength of many elderly individuals, the bathroom can become a place of hardship.

Cochlear implants consist of a few essential parts. First, a microphone that picks up sound from the world. Second, a processor which is used to distinguish sounds from one another. Third, a transmitter that takes the data from the processor and converts it to electrical impulses. Fourth, an electrode array that stimulates the auditory nerve to create the sensation of sound. This does not, in fact, replicate normal hearing, but it does create the ability for an individual to experience a representation of sound.

Although this may be a great way to save your time and save your clients time, when you are dealing with a client that has hearing loss you will need to slow it down. Make sure that you speak in short and simple sentences and you are not rushing what you are saying.

The decision to get a cochlear implant is an extremely complicated and personal one. Individuals making this decision should be respected, no matter what choice they make. The difficulty with these implants is that they can often create a distance between the deaf culture and the individual with a cochlear implant, so the choice can impact many aspects of a person's life.

Other useful tools for deaf individuals include captioning telephones and captioned call service. With these products and services, deaf individuals can use phones and make calls without the need for an interpreter. Either way, this is a wonderful tool.




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