THE EFFECTIVENESS OF THE NAVY HEARING CONSERVATION PROGRAM

The purposes of this study were to determine the incidence of signific ant threshold shift (STS) for a large number of Naval fleet personnel, evaluate hearing conservation program (HCP) compliance for a large nu mber of Naval ships, and determine whether two currently used complian ce measures are useful means of evaluating HCP effectiveness, Data wer e collected from 12,492 medical records of 154 ships/submarines regard ing STS incidence and follow-up, percent of valid audiograms, and othe r HCP elements, Data analyses suggested that STS incidence (29%) and f ollow-up compliance (62%) among fleet personnel may be too high and lo w, respectively, although audiogram compliance is 80.0 to 92.9%, Also, checklists commonly used to evaluate HCP compliance were not highly c orrelated with STS incidence. The data support literature recommendati ons for audiometric data base analyses to evaluate HCP effectiveness a nd for training for medical officers involved in the HCP, Recommendati ons and future implications are discussed.