Enhancing deaf awareness and communication skills of medical students: Development of online resources

Deaf people can have great difficulties in their dealings with the NHS. Yet it would appear that small changes in the way that healthcare staff interact with deaf people would make a big difference to their lives. Deaf awareness training however seems to be lacking in undergraduate medical curricula. This has been enthusiastically embraced by RNID Northern Ireland who have partnered the medical school in providing deaf awareness and basic sign language training for undergraduate students over the last several years. This project set out to provide a medical resource pack to encourage all medical schools to offer deaf awareness training by providing a set of resources that teachers could use to create their own deaf awareness courses.