Sign Here: How to Conduct Informed Consent With Deaf Individuals

The U.S. Deaf community - a minority group of more than 500,000 people who use American Sign Language (ASL) - is one of the most understudied and underserved populations within our nation's healthcare system. Reasons for this underrepresentation include lack of language access in healthcare and research settings, as well as communal feelings of mistrust toward the medical community. For example, healthcare providers and clinical researchers follow a medical model to "cure" or "fix" deafness, whereas most Deaf people do not want to be fixed, but rather to be respected as a cultural and linguistic minority group.

To begin to rectify this mistrust and underrepresentation, the informed consent process has been suggested as a key area of intervention. From 2016 - 2018, our team produced a film to train research personnel to effectively interact with Deaf research participants during the informed consent process. The intervention was designed through a two-year collaboration with the local Deaf community - community forums, focus groups, and an intervention development team inclusive of Deaf researchers, filmmakers, and laypeople.

In 2022, our team conducted a second series of focus groups with key stakeholders to refine, expand, and tailor a new version of the Sign Here training film for healthcare providers. Filmmaking is currently underway. In April 2023, we will launch a randomized controlled trial to test the feasibility, acceptability, and preliminary efficacy of the new training intervention. Eighty healthcare providers, medical students, and nursing students will be randomized to receive (1) the Sign Here training film or (2) an "intervention as usual" condition (i.e., standard written guidance on how to communicate with Deaf patients in healthcare settings). Primary outcomes are provider cultural competence, communication skill, and ability to build trust, which will be tested via virtual simulation with a Deaf standardized patient.

Results will potentially validate a product of immediate value - a highly-accessible, easy-to-disseminate training film to promote the inclusion of Deaf people in our nation's healthcare system. Results will also inform the design of a large, multi-institution study to explore the real-world scalability of the Sign Here training film in medical schools across the U.S.