Abstract
Background: Pediatric vision and hearing screening have shown to be inadequate in correlation with the recommended standard guidelines in school-aged children in both schools and primary pediatric care settings. It is crucial that all children’s vision and hearing are sufficiently screened for early detection and treatment of vision and hearing impairments to avoid preventable vision or hearing loss. Purpose: This quality improvement project aims to develop and implement vision and hearing screening clinical guidelines for school-aged children in pediatric primary care clinics to enhance the quality and process of screening in accordance to national and state requirements.|Methods: Fourteen pediatric primary care offices in were included in this QI project. Clinical guidelines for visual acuity and hearing screening for school-aged children were developed. Screening questions were added to the EMR system to screen if they have had a school screening testing their hearing and vision or seen an eye or hearing specialist in the past 2 years. If they had not, it was indicated that they should be screened in the clinic. Results: 65-75% of vision and hearing screenings were performed at school or at an eye or hearing specialist. 427 vision screenings and 539 hearing screenings were performed in the clinics. 2343 out of 2833 children screened had a vision and hearing screening performed either in the clinic, at school, or by a specialist.|Conclusions and implications for practice: The majority of vision and hearing screenings for school-aged children are performed in the school setting, but primary care providers cannot rely on schools to do all of the screenings. Adding screening questions may be an effective way to screen for those that are needing screened.