"What's Going on With My Ears?": Some Reflections on Managing Uncertainty in the Audiology Consultation

Purpose Feedback sessions after audiology consultations predominantly involve information counseling or patient education, where the patient is informed about their hearing status and possible management options. Effective communication is vital to ensure that information about the hearing impairment, recommendations, and/or management options is appropriately provided and understood by patients and that patient needs and expectations from the session are met. This research note reports on an exploratory study that sought to describe communication in follow-up audiological consultations within a context where ototoxicity monitoring is routine practice. Method Six interactions between patients and audiologists were video-recorded at an in-patient treatment facility for drug-resistant tuberculosis in Johannesburg and analyzed using a sociolinguistic approach. Semistructured interviews were also conducted with participants and analyzed using content analysis. Results These interactions differed considerably to other audiology consultations we have analyzed in terms of aspects such as the length of the interaction and the type of information given to patients. We observed a substantial amount of mitigative, vague, and exaggerated language in these interactions. Conclusions In this research note, we offer some reflections on this data set using a lens of uncertainty management theory and explore factors within the broader context that may contribute to the interactional features observed in the current study. Overall findings suggest the need for clinicians to be trained to embrace and address uncertainty rather than avoid it within challenging clinical encounters.