Abstract
This article discusses the challenges of treating a hearing impaired patient in dental surgery. The survey results discovered insufficient knowledge of medical personnel in the matter of communication with deaf patients.
At the same time medical personnel showed interest in this topic. Based on these findings, we recommend to increase an emphasis on classes which focus on this topic already during the studies and to include lectures in lifelong education of medical personnel.
Treating of hearing impaired patients helped us to create basic rules of communication in the dental surgery. The survey results also showed low level of knowledge of deaf patients about the dental hygiene.
The root cause is particularly insufficient amount of educational materials in sign language. For patients, we have prepared educational videos on dental hygiene with translation into sign language with subtitles.
There also have been several presentations for hearing impaired patients about the dental hygiene with practical demonstration of tooth brushing.