Mrs Mikaela Dammers1, Dr Rachael Beswick1, Mrs Gayle Hemsley2, Ms Lia Traves3, Ms Jane Fitzgibbons1
1Healthy Hearing, Nundah, Australia, 2Department of Education – Hearing Pathways, , Australia, 3Queensland Children’s Hospital, South Brisbane, Australia
In Queensland, not only is there no state-wide post-UNHS screening program, but public paediatric hearing services are extremely limited. Only 6 public audiology services accept referrals for routine hearing assessment and 5 of these are in metro-Brisbane. With a focus on improving physical and timely access to hearing services, Children’s Health Queensland has been piloting Community Hearing Screening Clinics since 2017. This model uses an Allied Health Assistant (AHA) workforce under the delegation of an Audiologist to screen hearing in children aged 9 months to 16 years in four community-based locations. Screening is also performed in vulnerable schools through partnership with the Department of Education (DoE). Under this model, teachers perform a preliminary app-based hearing screen to identify children requiring a follow-up screen by the Community Hearing Screening service.
This presentation will discuss and provide preliminary evidence for a post-natal hearing screening model including:
- What are the characteristics of the pilot model of care program, including the partnership model between the DoE and Department of Health to improve access for vulnerable children?
- An evaluation of service impacts and and patient outcomes will be presented, including an analysis of referral sub-groups.
- Potential barriers and cost-effectiveness of upscaling the current pilot hearing screening service into a state-wide community hearing screening program will also be discussed.
There is preliminary evidence that a targeted and collaborative approach to post-natal hearing screening can meet the needs of the current service gaps in Queensland and provide timely access to early detection and management of childhood hearing loss.
Biography:
Mikaela holds a Bachelor of Speech Pathology and Masters of Audiology and has been working as a paediatric diagnostic Audiologist for the past 16 years, with a strong focus on neonatal diagnostics. More recently, Mikaela became the program manager of the Community Hearing Screening Program. This program is an initiative of the Healthy Hearing Program. Mikaela has been working in this role for the past 12 months and has focused on expanding the program in the greater Brisbane region and more recently, to parts of regional Queensland.
mikaela.dammers@health.qld.gov.au