Hanneke Van der Hoek-Snieders

Part II: Evaluation of professional functioning 75 NFR is influenced by subjective Listening Effort (LE) and some factors influence both NFR and LE according to this model. Specifically, NFR and LE are influenced by ‘the feeling that something should change at work’ and by making personal adjustments, which include self-acceptance, acceptance of loss, and stress and withdrawal. It was found that ‘feeling that something should change at work’ and a poorer ability to make personal adjustments were associated with higher NFR and higher LE. Differences between the constructs NFR and LE were also reported in that study. According to the model, NFR is influenced by employees’ general health condition, but LE is not. Reporting a moderate or poor health condition, rather than a good health condition, was found to correlate moderately with a higher NFR. Furthermore, it was found that LE is influenced by employees’ hearing status measured with pure-tone audiometry, but NFR is not. Earlier studies report inconsistent results regarding the association between hearing status andNFR (Nachtegaal et al., 2009;Wang et al., 2018). It should be noted that the hypothesized model of our previous study (Van der Hoek-Snieders et al., 2020) has been constructed based on the correlations found in their study sample, and the model has not yet been validated in an independent sample. Also, this previous study was based on cross-sectional data. Therefore, the data do not allow strong statements about the causality regarding the effect of the interventions on the NFR of employees with hearing loss. Most interventions provided to employees with hearing loss can be captured within the domain of aural rehabilitation.The aimof aural rehabilitation is to reduce hearing complaints in social life and inwork situations and to improve work participation and daily life functioning (Boothroyd, 2007, 2017). It can consist of four components, respectively sensory management (e.g., the provision of hearing aids), perceptual training, instruction, and counselling. Instruction is a more directive manner of psycho-education, whereas counselling is more person-centered. Recently, Granberg and Gustafsson (2021) concluded in a scoping review that the literature regarding rehabilitation services for employees with hearing loss is scarce. It is for example not well described which disciplines should be involved or which specific services should be provided. In the Netherlands, individually tailored aural rehabilitation is usually applied by an audiologist and sometimes also by an occupational physician, social worker, psychologist, or speech therapist. Based on the patients’ needs, the rehabilitation consists of interventions belonging to one or more

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