Table 3 Emergent main themes, sub-themes and illustrative quotes (Q)
From: Changing medical students’ attitudes to and knowledge of deafness: a mixed methods study
Theme | Sub-theme | Quote |
|---|---|---|
Misunderstandings of people with hearing loss | Uncertainty | “At the start of the module I wasn’t really all that sure about what would be classified as deaf.” (Q1) |
“My knowledge was basically that deafness was loss of hearing which usually came with old age.” (Q2) | ||
Miscommunication | “You would probably think they would be an awkward patient because it’s someone that it’s difficult to communicate with” (Q3) | |
“If you saw deaf people in public behaving excitedly or being particularly expressive this would be perceived as ‘not normal’.” (Q4) | ||
Predominance of the medical model | Defining disability | “The hearing family see it as like a disease they would like to fix or find a cure for whereas deaf families have their culture and their pride and things like that and it’s not really a disability” (Q5) |
Application of model | “The purpose would be to treat someone’s pathology or problem they have underlying. The medical person themselves sees that as a problem, the deaf person themselves doesn’t see that as a problem” (Q6) | |
“… you could offend a deaf person in implying that deafness is an affliction when some people are happy being deaf.” (Q7) | ||
Exclusivity of deaf culture | Experience | “Unless you actually meet a deaf person then you don’t have a full understanding. I had never had any contact with a deaf person until this project. There are many groups of people with whom unless you have a direct relationship with them, you are not going to be able to identify what their issues are.” (Q8) |
“[the deaf tutor] said ‘nobody is going to get more than 3 [grade], because if you’re not deaf, you can’t understand it.’” (Q9) | ||
Pride | “There seems to be a certain amount of pride that comes with the deaf community than maybe you hear about with lots of other disabilities … a lot of people wouldn’t want to change it [their deafness]” (Q10) | |
Best teaching practice | Interactive tutorials | “make it interactive. Because I think if you are actually learning some signs and coming away with something you can do practically, that’d be useful.” (Q11) “I thought it [existing material] was very similar to our communication skills videos we would get during our semesters, I thought it was useful in that way, showing good practice and bad practice at the same time so you can contrast the two.” (Q12) “incorporate it into the system and give value to it, for example if you don’t attend this tutorial you won’t get 20%” (Q13) |
Deaf person involvement | “you could … ask him [the deaf tutor] to come in and show the differences [good practice and bad practice communicating with a deaf patient]” (Q14) | |
Videos preferred | “It’s really hard to convey a 3D picture in 2D and like show the motion in two separate stages, you kind of need to show the whole sequence. Video is a lot better than the pictures” (Q15) |