Objective:

To investigate the difficulties for health care professionals when dealing with patients with severe deafness in a medical appointment.

Method:

This is a cross-sectional, descriptive and qualitative study conducted in March 2011 in the Primary Health Care Network of Campina Grande - Paraíba. We used a structured questionnaire completed by 89 health professionals working in the Health Family Strategy. They were asked about the difficulties when dealing with deaf patients in a medical appointment. Their answers were categorized by means of a Thematic Content Analysis.

Results:

Among the main difficulties we find: impaired communication, a lack of trained human resources for these appointments and an insufficient recognition of these health needs, inappropriate infrastructure for deaf patient reception and care provision, uncertainty regarding the quality of the care provided at the medical appointment and the patient's lack of autonomy.

Conclusions:

We found that an impaired communication is a barrier to health promotion and that both health professionals and health units are not able to receive and meet the health needs of a patient with severe deafness.

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