Hearing Loss and Fitness for Work
Authors: Dr John Low / Dr Roger Lai (Occupational Physician: OccuMED)
People with hearing loss may have difficulty listening to normal conversations, hearing in the presence of background noise, using communication systems, hearing warning signals and localising the direction of a sound source. It may also affect their ability to use hearing protection.
Significant hearing loss can affect fitness for work in jobs that require good communication or where catastrophic consequences may result (ie. serious injury due to failure to hear a warning signal). Exposure to excessive noise may further compromise hearing ability.
In certain occupations where there are specific hearing requirements, governing organisations often develop medical standards. For example, the National Road Transport Commission has hearing guidelines for commercial drivers.
Where there is no such medical standard, a person with significant hearing loss needs to be assessed on their ability to undertake the inherent requirements of the job safely and effectively with or without modifications which do not cause undue hardship on the employer (e.g. installation of visual warning systems). Otherwise, denying the person a job based on hearing loss may be deemed discriminatory.
In these cases the extent of the hearing loss should be assessed clinically and/or audiometrically but the disabling affects of hearing loss should be assessed practically in the work scenario. The disabling effects of hearing loss are dependent on multiple factors including type of hearing loss, the distance from the sound source, background noise, job experience etc. Job experience and skill may outweigh any potential disadvantage suggested by pure tone audiometry done in a controlled environment which may be unrelated to the real work settingLabels: Fitness for Work
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