Abstract
Hearing health care is biomedically focused, device-centered, and clinician-led. There
is emerging evidence that these characteristics—all of which are hallmarks of a health
care system designed to address acute, rather than chronic, conditions—may contribute
to low rates of help-seeking and hearing rehabilitation uptake among adults with hearing
loss. In this review, we introduce audiologists to the Chronic Care Model, an organizational
framework that describes best-practice clinical care for chronic conditions, and suggest
that it may be a viable model for hearing health care to adopt. We further introduce
the concept of chronic condition self-management, a key component of chronic care
that refers to the knowledge and skills patients use to manage the effects of a chronic
condition on all aspects of daily life. Drawing on the chronic condition evidence
base, we demonstrate a link between the provision of effective self-management support
and improved clinical outcomes and discuss validated methods with which clinicians
can support the acquisition and application of self-management skills in their patients.
We examine the extent to which elements of chronic condition self-management have
been integrated into clinical practice in audiology and suggest directions for further
research in this area.
Keywords
aural rehabilitation - Chronic Care Model - chronic condition - hearing loss - self-management
