“Deafness is considered an ‘invisible’ disability, so people don’t know that I cannot hear or understand them at times,” said Anne Feliciano, an engineer who services medical equipment inside hospitals. “Especially during the pandemic, it’s significantly harder for me to communicate with people, since I’m not able to lip read when people are wearing masks. I overcome these challenges by making people aware when I cannot hear them, and that I need them to work with me.”
According to the World Health Organization (WHO), one in five people, or 466 million people across the globe, suffer from disabling hearing loss.1
Anne’s Journey with Deafness
Anne’s hearing loss began at an early age. Born in the Philippines, where regular screening tests were not provided for newborns at that time, Anne’s family was unaware she had hearing loss. According to sign language studies, ninety percent of deaf children are born to hearing parents.2
After her family moved to the United States, observations of Anne struggling in school were attributed to the language barrier. It wasn’t until kindergarten, when a teacher noticed Anne having difficulty with school work, that Anne was first diagnosed with mild to moderate hearing loss in both ears and received her first pair of hearing aids.
“I was fascinated by how my hearing aids worked. I would play with them, take them apart, and then put them back together,” recounts Anne.
Anne didn’t get another check up until age 14, when she learned her hearing had deteriorated to a level of severe to profound loss. Her hearing aids helped some, but she relied heavily on lip reading. Then, at age 17, Anne witnessed her dad experiencing a medical emergency at home and she realized she couldn’t make a phone call to get him help. It was a reality check for her. Anne then made the decision to get cochlear implants.
The implants work differently from hearing aids. Rather than amplifying sound like a hearing aid does, a cochlear implant bypasses the damaged inner ear to stimulate the auditory nerve directly and provide the sense of sound.
Not only did the implants greatly improve Anne’s hearing, but the technology fascinated her. “After receiving my cochlear implant I decided to get a degree in biomedical engineering with an electrical focus,” Anne said.
Communicating with customers
Anne joined GE Healthcare in 2019 where she installs, repairs, and maintains mammography, mobile, and fixed X-ray equipment. “When I first joined GE Healthcare, my manager introduced me to a nurse within the company who reinforced that my safety is priority number one,” Anne remembers. “For example, if a customer calls me while I’m driving, and if I’m struggling at all with the call, I need to be safe and pull over first and worry about the call second.”
Anne also is appreciative of her team. “They treat me like any other person on the team, not someone different because of my disability,” she said.
“Being deaf, I often faced challenges communicating with others. GE has put me in a position where I have learned to be comfortable communicating with others in person and over the phone. Through this job, not only have I acquired a lot of technical knowledge, but I also learned how to quickly be transparent with people when I am struggling to understand them. It has made me more confident.”
1 World Health Organization, “Deafness and Hearing Loss,”: https://www.who.int/health-topics/hearing-loss#tab=tab_2
2 Mitchell RE, Karchmer MA. Chasing the mythical ten percent: Parental hearing status of deaf and hard of hearing students in the United States. (PDF) Sign Language Studies. 2004;4(2):138-163.
