Part II: Evaluation of professional functioning 93 We carefully described the components of aural rehabilitation that were provided using patient files, but we may have missed some aspects of the provided rehabilitation. For example, audiologists of the included audiological centers often give some kind of instruction on how the hearing aids or assistive listening devices function and how they can be properly used. However, this type of instruction was not administered in the patient files, and is therefore not reported in this study. Another study limitation is that the follow-up time of this study was relatively short. Aural rehabilitation was provided within this period in most, but not in all patients, which resulted in the exclusion of a few patients. An advantage of the follow-up time of three months is that there is a smaller chance that the NFR has changed due to other reasons than the aural rehabilitation. Concluding remarks The NFR and LE of employees with hearing loss can be improved by aural rehabilitation, but this study shows that this is true in only part of the employees. Therefore, improving current practices should be considered and evaluated, for example by applying a different combination of rehabilitation components. Especially, interventions that affect personal adjustments may be promising to further reduce the NFR in employees with hearing loss.
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