Users' Satisfaction Evaluation About Hearing Health Services in the Public Health Service

Introduction: The Politics of Hearing Health Care in Brazil promotes a wide coverage in attend to individuals with hearing disabilities, benefiting users with hearing aids and speech therapy. This implantation of hearing care services makes it necessary to perform an evaluation as a way to detect indicators that will lead to improvements of this policy.

Objectives: This study aims to check the satisfaction of the users who received an individual hearing aid in a Hearing Health Service of the Public Health Service.

Methods: The research consisted of a questionnaire answered by the users, and/or the person responsible for the user, who had been benefited with the individual hearing aid in the Public Health Service, containing questions related to the satisfaction with hearing aids and the Hearing Health Service.

Results: The sample consisted of 130 subjects. The majority of the subjects (53.9%) were satisfied with the Hearing Health Service. About the treatment given by the professionals, 92 (70.8%) of them claimed to be very satisfied. Regarding the satisfaction with the individual hearing aid, most of the users (53.6%) answered they were satisfied. When asked about undergoing speech therapy in their respective cities after receiving the hearing aids, 117 (90%) of them said they did not undergo the treatment.

Conclusion: The interviewees are satisfied with the service provided and with the individual hearing aid. This research points out the importance of this evaluation in order to enable the enhancement and qualification of the service for the treatment to be optimized.

Keywords: Hearing aids, consumer satisfaction, unified health system.