Survey of the perceived benefits and shortcomings of a specialist tinnitus clinic.

Questions about the clinical effectiveness of tinnitus services are of considerable interest to health professionals and health care providers alike in view of the chronic nature of tinnitus, the diversity of tinnitus-related problems, and the range of costs of different approaches to the clinical management of tinnitus. This study sought to identify the views of patients with tinnitus, who attended a specialist tinnitus clinic in Wales, about their satisfaction with that service. One hundred and forty-eight patients returned an open-ended mail-out questionnaire that asked them to list the perceived benefits and shortcomings of attendance at the specialist clinic. The respondents were classified as current or very recent attenders (43 per cent) and those who had first attended between 18 to 60 months earlier (57 per cent). Respondents cited an average of 2.8 benefits compared to only 0.8 perceived shortcomings per respondent. Major areas of perceived benefit included technical assistance, in the form of hearing aid or tinnitus masker fitting, and the general therapeutic nature of the consultation(s) with clinic staff. Statistically significant differences were found in some volunteered benefits in relation to gender and patient status as a current or previous attender. More than one-quarter of the respondents (28.4 per cent) stated that there were no shortcomings to their clinic attendance. The main volunteered shortcoming was lack of treatment effectiveness. The study showed that tinnitus clinic attendance resulted in many of the patients' individually expressed complaints being addressed effectively. Further, the study's findings confirmed the effectiveness of the provision of information and counselling as a fundamental form of tinnitus management for a substantial proportion of patients with tinnitus.