Hearing loss and employment.
I am in my fifties, trained as an RN, with progressive familial deafness that hearing aides don�t seem to help: especially in crowds. I can communicate decently in a controlled, quiet, one to one group where I can use lip reading to improve my comprehension. I have slowly moved myself from direct patient care to quality management, where hearing is less vital. My company is strongly tiered, with retirement pegged to final pay. I was recently asked to leave my last position because of my hearing and problems hearing in a group situation. Thanks to the ADA, I was able to get my workplace to offer another position. Despite the move, I find myself at a severe disadvantage because most of the work involves knowledge held in �corporate memory� and transmitted verbally. My problem is how to protect myself from the consequences of my failure to be fully aware of the shared, verbally transmitted, knowledge. One thing I have considered is that I might be better off retiring with disability from my work than I would be staying. This is difficult however, because they said in my last position, I couldn�t do the job, because of my disability, but because there seems to be no standard for �legal deafness�, I was not disabled.
Re: Hearing loss and employment.
I recommend that you share your story with an employment attorney. He or she will be better equipped to deal with the employment discrimination aspects of this matter.
Good luck.
