The Difficult Patient

Abstract

Within the average population attending for rehabilitation, there will usually be a number of patients who will be categorized, for one reason or another, as ‘difficult’. It is fairer to these people to recognize from the start that what makes them acquire this epithet is not usually any deliberate contrariness on their part, but rather that circumstances exist that limit the benefit they can gain from routine rehabilitation procedures. They might thus more appropriately be termed ‘atypical’ patients, particularly since the difficulties involved are often essentially, a reflection of the audiologist’s inability to recognize the real problem and the subsequent failure to deal with it. Of course, no two people have exactly the same problems, and ideally all rehabilitation should be tailored to the individual patient’s needs, but in reality a range of normal procedures is adopted to which the majority of patients respond well. It is an exciting challenge to the audiologist to recognize that the patient has special needs, so that time is not wasted on standard procedures when an alternative approach to that patient’s rehabilitation problems is required.