Darja Pajik works as an occupational therapist at a long-term care facility in Slovenia for people with intellectual and physical impairments. She lives with severe hearing loss in both ears.
Her cochlear implants (surgically implanted hearing devices that provide a sense of sound to those with significant hearing loss), beautifully decorated with music notes, help her cope with her hearing loss.
Cochlear implants make a big difference for Darja. Yet like all people who use hearing devices, she still sometimes misses parts of conversations, especially in noisy places. The years when her hearing loss was very severe and her hearing aids were not providing enough benefit were extremely difficult for her, especially at work.
With smiling eyes, Darja shares that some patients at the long-term care facility where she works were faster at adjusting to her hearing loss than her colleagues. Darja points out that her colleagues, who were trained to support people with disabilities, still had some trouble and needed time to adjust to a co-worker’s disability.
A personal journey towards empowerment
Darja has been using hearing devices for almost 30 years – first hearing aids and now cochlear implants. She is an advocate for the rights of people with hearing loss in Slovenia and across Europe.
But it was not always like that. Darja explains that it took years of self-reflection and strength-building to get to where she is now. Joining organizations for people with hearing loss helped her gain the strength she needed to become an advocate.
She has become a reference at her workplace. Colleagues turn to Darja when they face communication challenges with patients at the long-term care facility. Colleagues even turn to her when they experience problems with their own hearing. With her own experience of hearing loss, Darja helps suggest hearing services and accommodations that make communication easier between individuals.
Empathy will never go out of fashion
Hearing technology has changed Darja’s life, but she points out that it is not the solution to everything. She sometimes takes patients to appointments and notices that health-care workers and facilities are not always inclusive of people with hearing loss.
“For care to be inclusive of people with communication difficulties, health and social workers must show empathy. Technology can break, become outdated or be too complicated or expensive. But when there is empathy, accommodations will naturally follow,” Darja explains.
Awareness training among health and social care workers
Darja believes that health and social care workers need to be systematically trained about hearing and vision losses and how they affect people. She dreams of a time when people with lived experience become an integral part of the training team for health workers, as a way to truly embed disability inclusion in health and social care training programmes.
“It does not need to take a lot of time – just one hour would be enough. Health and social care workers need to understand that these conditions are common. The best they can do is to ask how they can accommodate each person, because no 2 people have the same needs,” she adds.
Support from WHO/Europe
Ear and hearing conditions are among the most common health issues. In the WHO European Region, about 190 million people have hearing loss or deafness. WHO/Europe supports its Member States by promoting ear and hearing care in primary health care and by working towards a world where persons with disabilities living in countries across the Region have the best health possible.
WHO/Europe recognizes the vital role of health and care workers in strong and resilient health systems, and the importance of investing in their education and training and workforce optimization. Properly trained, supported and protected, formal long-term care workers like Darja increase the quality of care that users receive.
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