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Starting your first job as a newly-qualified nurse just
before the pandemic struck would be enough of a challenge for anyone.
But it was doubly so for Caitlin Tanner, who was born
profoundly deaf and relies heavily on lip-reading to communicate – not easy when
you are working in intensive care and everyone has to wear face masks.
Now she has led a new initiative designed to improve the
care of hospital patients with hearing aids or cochlear implants.
At the same time, award-winner Caitlin is developing her own
career, having completed her masters and now embarking on a PhD exploring the
experiences of deaf nurses in the UK.
Her doctorate focuses on the experiences of deaf nurses in
the UK. While her role as a deaf nurse is by no means unique, 25-year-old
Caitlin said it was not common either.
“From reading the literature, I found that there is
inadvertently some discrimination, some biases towards deaf people coming into
healthcare.
“A lot of people think that, if you can’t hear, how can you
look after a patient? A lot of the research I’m going to be conducting is into
how we can support these nurses so we can safely get them into healthcare.
“It’s something that is definitely needed. As much as I’m
studying deaf nurses, this is still applicable to older nurses who have
age-related hearing loss, and young people coming into nursing.
“Many of them may have progressive hearing loss because of
noise from earbuds and headphones.
“I definitely want to use my experience to support deaf
people to come into nursing or into healthcare because I know they don’t
believe they can access that kind of career path.”
Caitlin recently finished in ICU after three and a half
years to focus on her doctorate, though she will continue nursing by working
bank shifts.
And she has used her experience to design a deaf care plan
for patients wearing hearing aids or cochlear implants.
She presented it at an innovation meeting in the intensive
care unit, where it will be implemented soon.
“In university we don’t get taught about hearing aids or
cochlear implants,” Caitlin said. “The feedback I got from the meeting was that
a lot of nurses on the ward might have to ask the doctors, ‘How do we change
the batteries? How do we do this or that?’.
“A lot of education is needed. Communication with deaf
patients is such an important thing, especially in ITU.
“The care plan is a guide that staff can use to look after
them. Before I finished, I went around the unit, doing some teaching. I’m
really excited about it.
“The plan is to trial it in ITU, then roll it out across
Morriston and then, hopefully, the wider Swansea Bay.”
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