Newborn and infant hearing health education for nursing professionals

ABSTRACT: Hearing loss is a sensory deprivation, which can brings several consequences, among them: language development delay, emotional and social problems, and school difficulties. In such settings, we stress the role of nursing professional, who can expand their knowledge about children's hearing health, all the way from pre-natal care. OBJECTIVE: To check the knowledge of nursing professional after the educational actions on pediatric hearing. METHOD: A quasi-experimental design with time-series outline. We had 82 nursing professional participating (nurses, technicians and assistants) working in a university hospital between March and September of 2011. All of the interviewees answered a semi-structured questionnaire before and after the educational actions. RESULTS: We observed a significant change in the knowledge of the nursing professionals after the educational activity in most of the variables; such as: ideal age to perform the newborn hearing screening; ideal age to diagnose hearing loss; ideal age to start intervention against hearing loss and risk indicators for hearing loss. CONCLUSION: It is believed that the methodology used in educational activities, based on problems found in professional practice, education may have contributed greatly to increase knowledge about hearing health, especially concerning neonates and infants.