Key findings about hearing loss in the working-life: a scoping review from a well-being perspective

Abstract

Objective

This scoping review investigated key findings about hearing loss (HL) in the working life (WL) from a well-being perspective.

Design

A scoping review protocol was used to search the literature and to explore and extract key findings. A narrative analysis of key findings was used to group the data into themes. Study sample: Fifty-three articles from 29 different journals were included in the analysis.

Results

The narrative analysis identified three broad themes; individual aspects, work environment and work organisation. Individual aspects concerned problems that workers with HL experienced in their working lives, strategies they used to manage their working lives and different aspects of health in relation to WL. Work environment focussed on the physical, organisational and social work environment. Work organisation identified aspects related to division of labour and employment status.

Conclusions

Several of the included papers revealed lots of findings but did not substantially discuss the findings from a WL perspective. HL and well-being in WL is a multidimensional phenomenon due to the interplay between the individual and the environment. This interplay is rarely discussed in the included papers. Furthermore, intersectional aspects are infrequently highlighted and need to be further explored in future research.

Keywords:

• Hearing loss
• working life
• well-being
• scoping review
• health
• employment

Acknowledgements

The authors thank Ulrika Johansson at the University library of Örebro University, Sweden, for excellent help and support with the database searches.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).