The rewarding job of being a hearing aid audiologist
By Karen Finch RHAD FSHAA FRSA, MD of The Hearing Care Centre, Ipswich.
The spring and summer seasons are a special time for a hearing aid audiologist...
When I’m out and about in the countryside of my home county of Suffolk listening to birdsong, the wind rustling in the reeds at Aldeburgh or the sea rattling on its pebbly beach, I remember how important my work is for people who have hearing loss.
Without their hearing aids many people wouldn’t be able to hear and enjoy what I enjoy and that gives me great satisfaction.
But the summer is a busy time for us. We will be out at Suffolk Show meeting people and explaining our work, and at a big music festival using the opportunity it offers to continue our campaign to warn people of the danger loud music can pose to their hearing.
We’re staging an exhibition to bring to the wider public information about hearing loss and how we can help, and there’s our summer long photographic competition to raise awareness. This year entrants have to capture with their lens the essence of Music Making in Suffolk.
Back in the office I have a busy appointment schedule of hearing assessments, fittings and follow-up appointments. Before I sign-off a patient I might have a series of meetings with them as we go through what is really a process of rehabilitation.
Contrary to popular belief sticking a hearing aid in someone’s ear doesn’t solve the problem of hearing loss: that is simply the start. They have to learn to hear again.
The good news for me is that this is actually the part of the job I enjoy most, caring for people. I heard an excellent sales presentation recently in which the speaker pointed out that the cheapest form of advertising was to have a lot of satisfied customers.
That’s what I aim to do – and what I encourage my people to do – care for the patient in such a way that I exceed their expectations so that afterwards they tell everyone about us.
As well as running my business I try and put something back into the profession and for the last few years I have been very active in my professional body, the British Society of Hearing Aid Audiologists. I’ve done my bit as committee member, treasurer – I was even president for two years – but the role I’ve loved most has been running the Communications team.
The other day I was trying to work out why I enjoyed it so much, and then it twigged: it’s because it means I’m working with people, and in organising our annual conference, I’m doing something that others appreciate.
And that brings me back to the day job as a hearing aid dispenser. I wouldn’t have it any other way.
For more information about The Hearing Care Centre, visit: www.hearingcarecentre.co.uk
Comments
Hi, how nice it is to read your about your commitment to people with hearing loss. I have been deaf all my life but only found out about it 20 yrs ago when I met my wife who worked in the nhs, and then managed to get hearing aids which helped transform my life. Since then working in paris 9 months ago I had an accident which again changed my life for ever by taking the hearing of my best ear compleatly. I now have a by-cross hearing aid which helps me and I am also in the process of deciding whether or not to try and go for the procedure of an implant or baha . One comment I would like to say is that in the 20 years of dealing with audiologists, where I go in west park hospital, wolverhampton, west mids, I cannot fault them, and in the last 6 months I don't know how I would have got by without them, to be hard of hearing all your life you live with it because you dont know any different but when you loose most of what you can hear it suddenly puts you in a near world of silence and at first that can be frightening. Anyway my thanks go out to people like yourself who help people like me. Pete the deaf plumber.
Posted by: Pete the plumber | July 26, 2010 05:19 AM