Experiences of Health Care Workers Regarding Maintenance of Confidentiality Concerning Hearing Challenged People in Selected Public Health Facilities in eThekwini District, South Africa

Snenhlanhla Kelly Dlamini and Maureen Nokuthula Sibiya

Global Journal of Health Science, 2020, vol. 12, issue 6, 63

Abstract: Communication between a health care provider and a patient is a pre-requisite for any intervention to occur in the process of health care. Deaf patients depend on interpreters when seeking health care. Confidentiality is an issue since interpreters are involved in the Deaf community. Health care workers (HCWs) are tasked to ensure that the delivery of information to the patient is accurate and kept confidential. A descriptive exploratory qualitative design was used to explore the experiences of HCWs regarding the maintenance of confidentiality for hard of hearing patients. The study population comprised HCWs who worked with hearing challenged patients. Purposive sampling, which is a type of non-probability sampling, was utilized to select the study participants from the population. This research study was conducted at two hospitals in eThekwini District. Structured interviews, using an interview schedule, were used to collect data. The actual sample size was 10 participants. Data was analysed using Tesch’s eight steps of thematic analysis. Six major themes emerged from the data analysis namely training of health care workers, communication preferences for hard of hearing patients, communication challenges, health care worker-patient relationship, involvement of family members as interpreters and measures to maintain confidentiality. Majority of participants experienced communication challenges with patients who are hard of hearing since only few HCWs are trained in sign language. The findings of this study will contribute to addressing issues related to the maintenance of confidentiality of hard of hearing patients. This study does not claim to exhaust the subject but to raise awareness of new investigations in other realities. Further research in the larger representative population of HCWs and hard of hearing patients is necessary to make the health care system more accessible and communication with HCWs more satisfying and effective.

Date: 2020
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.ccsenet.org/journal/index.php/gjhs/article/download/0/0/42519/44363 (application/pdf)
http://www.ccsenet.org/journal/index.php/gjhs/article/view/0/42519 (text/html)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:ibn:gjhsjl:v:12:y:2020:i:6:p:63

Access Statistics for this article

More articles in Global Journal of Health Science from Canadian Center of Science and Education Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Canadian Center of Science and Education ().