BCIG Survey of the impact of COVID-19 on service delivery by cochlear implant teams in the UK and EIRE

Abstract

Aim: the COVID-19 pandemic caused cochlear implant programmes to rapidly adapt their service delivery models. In recent years advances had been made in remote care approaches for assessment, rehabilitation and mapping. The BCIG conducted a survey to understand the impact that pandemic had on service delivery, to understand the benefits and limitations of the online resources and to explore the impact that these changes had on clinicians.

Methods: an online questionnaire was developed that was separated into: demographics, patient access approaches, repairs and equipment, approaches to tuning, rehabilitation, psychological support, medical emergencies, remote care resources and assessments. The questionnaire link was sent to coordinators and circulated to BCIG members.

Results: there were 52 respondents to the questionnaire representing 18 cochlear implant centres. For the clinics represented 66% were only open during the initial lockdown for emergencies and 92% had some staff in clinic everyday.
For repairs, the majority were dealt with by post but in-person and company repair schemes were essential parts of the service delivery. For those centres offering tuning services, the majority were carried out by post, but a mixture of remote programming, in-person, patient pick up were also offered. The delivery of rehabilitation proved to be possible using remote resources, either by video call or signposting individuals to helpful resources. This was in contrast to psychology services which were more difficult to deliver remotely. As expected, medical emergencies involved more in-person contact.
Of those individuals responding to the survey, 25% reported that during the pandemic that their sense of well being was quite low.

Conclusions: cochlear implant centres have responded effectively to changing their service delivery during the pandemic. They were able to benefit from the video conferencing systems that had been established and software that was available for rehabilitation services.
Clinicians requested that the BCIG helped to coordinate experiences across centres to develop a knowledge base of effective practice.

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Identifiers

ORCID for Helen Cullington: orcid.org/0000-0002-5093-2020

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