Simulate Aging Reflection Paper

One of the most annoying aspects of my job is interviewing an elderly patient that has come into the hospital, and they have some sort of hearing impaired. Trying to have a conversation while almost yelling, and having words get lost in translation, can be very frustrating. So for this assignment, I decided to impair my hearing with ear plugs in both ears to simulate aging. I did this on two separate occasions, once at home for about a half an hour while everyone was home and I was doing my normal morning routine, then for about forty-five minutes in public with a group of friends. Initially when I put the ear plugs in at home, it wasn't too abnormal. The most noticeable difference was the background noise significantly got reduced, such as
the white noise from my floor fan, and my family talking in the distance. I also noticed since there was an absence of background noise, I was internally talking to myself in my head more as I adjusted to the quietness. When I tried talking to my family, I had to face them more often in order to try and read their lips. At a distance this became especially hard. I could imagine if an elderly adult had vision impairment, that it would be almost impossible to do after about twenty to thirty feet. At home though, the hearing impairment wasn't too bad. The quietness of the house, and close proximity to my family members made it easier to engage with them, with relatively minor tweaks to my everyday habits to compensate for not being able to hear as clearly. The real issue with the hearing impairment came from when I was in public with a group of friends.
We went out to a Mexican restaurant on a Saturday night, and right away I was having issues. There was a lot more stimuli at the restaurant, between other people, the waiter, and my friends, only taking in a fraction of the auditory information made it confusing and somewhat frustrating. I could not tell if someone was trying to engage with me if they weren't looking at me. I kept scanning the table for eye contact for a cue of where to focus my attention. I frequently did not catch my friends trying to have a conversation, because I was at the far side of the table. The person next to me had to nudge my arm in order to get my attention. One time the waiter came up behind me and asked if anyone wanted refills, I was so focused on trying to read my friend's lip across the table, that I had no idea he was even there or was talking to me. After about twenty minutes, I did start to feel somewhat isolated and noticed I was picking up my phone more, and playing on it while other people kept talking. Even though my friends where cool with me wearing the ear plugs for a short while, and besides a few laughs initially, they didn't seem to mind other than when they had to get my attention. The waiter never really said anything about it, but my friends may of clued him in on what was going on, and I just did not hear it. I could see how if this was an ongoing everyday way of life, that
friends, family, and strangers would be pretty annoyed really fast due to constantly repeating themselves and having to raise their voice. Initially when I put the ear plugs in, I did not think it would have as big of an impact on my ever day life as I thought it would.
I figured I would be able to compensate for it, and still go on about my day. At home, in a controlled environment, I could see how that is possible, but out in public there is just too much information you are trying to process at once, while not having one of your core senses. This project definitely showed me that I need to take care of my hearing, and that it should not be taken for granted . Even a slight impairment could have a huge affect on how I interact with others. If I do lose my hearing when I am older due to aging, I would highly consider getting hearing aids to help reduce missing information and be able to better engage if conversations with
people. As far as dealing with patients who come into the hospital with hearing loss, I think I will be more understanding, even though I was only in their shoes for about eighty minutes, I am more sympathetic about how hard things can be when you only process a fraction of the auditory information. If anything, I have learned some tricks in order to help them understand what I am trying to say, for example, talking slower, facing them directly, slowly raise my voice to a level that they can hear instead of yelling, and overall just being patient.