Which of the following nursing interventions would most likely facilitate effective communication with a hearing-impaired patient?

(A) Ask the patient to repeat what was said in order to evaluate understanding. (B) Stand directly in front of the patient to facilitate lip reading. (C) Reduce environmental noise and distractions before communicating. (D) Raise the voice to project sound at a higher frequency.Answer Explanation: Communication with the hearing impaired can be facilitated by talking in a quiet space free of competing noise stimuli and other distractions. Asking the patient to repeat what was said is likely to provoke frustration in the patient. A more effective strategy would be to repeat the question or statement, choosing different words. Raising the voice to project sound at higher frequency would make understanding more difficult. The nurse cannot assume that the patient reads lips. If the patient does read lips, on average he or she will understand only 50% of words accurately.