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Overview

Communication barriers between Deaf patients and health care providers leave patients confused, frustrated and the missinterpretation can often lead to adverse health care outcomes as well as avoidance of health care altogether. This in turn also adds a higher likely hood of these patients presenting to the Emergency department due to poor or miss management. (W.N. Comstock., 2015)

The purpose of this website is to enable the gap of communication to be bridged. It is a website that can be utilized by all health care staff to gain confidence and ability in communicating with deaf people, aswell as being able to gain insight into deaf culture and understanding the difficulties individuals face.

As described in the literature, (Deaf adults and health care: Giving voice to their stories) the largest challenge between deaf patients and health care providers is communication.

The communication problems researched are not related to intelligence but in how visual language such as sign, facial expressions and body language is used to convey a message. (K. Sheppard., 2013)