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Caring for a child with a cochlear implant in the home environment.
LOVĚTÍNSKÁ, Michala
Cochlear implants have been used in the Czech Republic since 1993. The cochlear implant gives deaf individuals the opportunity to receive auditory sensations. Cochlear implantation is a procedure where the implant is inserted under the skin and connected to a series of electrodes that are inserted into the cochlea. This procedure is performed by a surgeon which is specializes in ear, nose and throat. After long - term rehabilitation, the individual is able to understand spoken language and can even make phone calls without reading. With a cochlear implant, most users canintegrate into main stream society, among the normal hearing population. Children go to mainstream school, play sports, and communicate with others, all with out the use of sign language. Cochlear implants are currently operated in the Czech Republic at the Motol Hospital in Prague, the St. Anne's Hospital in Brno and the Ostrava Hospital. The first aim was to find out and describe how the child experiences the cochlear implant fitting, the second aim was to find out what problems parents perceive after fitting the cochlear implant in a child, and the third aim was to find out what barriers parents perceive in caring for a child with cochlear implant. The research investigation was carried out by qualitative research, using the method of semi-structured interview. The research sample consisted of ten adult informants, specifically parents, and five child informants. Parents and children come from different regions of the Czech Republic. The interviews took place from February to March 2023. Subsequently, all responses from the interviews with parents of children with cochlear implants users were listed. The results of the responses are divided into categories and their subcategories. The analysis of the results shows that the perception of the cochlear implant is different in children. The research found a fourth group of children who react to the first programming by crying. It was found that the child's experience of CI programming can be influenced by parents. As such, barriers to caring for a child with a cochlear implant have not been identified. Rather, parents perceived shortcomings of the cochlear implant, such as the speech processor slipping off the child's head, difficulty in obtaining a helmet, and perceived sweat as a deficiency with CI. The results show that children's perception of cochlear implant fitting is very individual, depending on many factors. Parents can influence the child's perception by training individual sounds in the home environment. Problems following cochlear implant programming in a child should be minimal, with a chech-up by a clinical engineer. The difficulties perceived by parents in caring for a child with a cochlear implant do not come out as prominently as CI deficiencies. It is very important to treat the child individually. Each child has different characteristics and abilities. From the results of the research investigation, we want to provide comprehensive information for parents of children who experience hearing loss or deafness in their child, and their possible solution is a cochlear implant. The results of the bachelor thesis were presented before an expert jury at the student competition of the ZSF JČU in České Budějovice. Furthermore, the results will be published in a professional journal for nurses.
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