“The barriers are plentiful.” Speech-language pathologists’ perspectives of enablers and barriers to hearing assessment for children in metropolitan, regional, and rural Australia: A mixed methods study

Abstract

Purpose

Access to hearing assessment is important for children, as poor auditory information can lead to poor speech and oral language development. This study aims to identify enablers and barriers to accessing hearing assessments for Australian children from the perspective of speech-language pathologists (SLPs), comparing access in metropolitan, regional, and rural areas.

Method

This is a sequential, explanatory mixed-methods study. Forty-nine participants completed the quantitative survey and 14 participated in semi-structured interviews. The study was undertaken online and included participants from metropolitan, regional, and rural parts of Australian states and territories.

Result

Similar accessibility issues were experienced across geographic locations and access to hearing assessment was related to the complexity of individual contexts. Speech-language pathologists felt that awareness and knowledge of hearing loss was low in parents and health professionals. Participants discussed barriers such as long wait times, complex criteria, and inefficient services that lead to compromised outcomes for clients.

Conclusion

Barriers to hearing assessment are extensive and multifaceted. Future research might examine the accessibility of the health system in light of the barriers discussed in this research, and whether policies and procedures could be adapted to allow more easily accessible services.

Keywords:

• Hearing assessment
• speech pathology
• service delivery
• barriers
• regional
• rural

Ethics statement

Ethics approval was granted by Central Queensland University Ethics Committee, project number 0000023432.

Author contributions

JZ: Conceptualisation, Data curation, Formal analysis, Investigation, Methodology, Project administration, Validation, Writing—Original draft. BZ: Conceptualisation, Formal analysis, Writing—Review & editing. RP: Methodology, Formal analysis, Writing—Review & editing.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).