- In this video, I'm talking about
the four ways that you can know
if you're actually hearing your best
with your hearing aids, coming up.
(upbeat music)
Hi guys, Cliff Olson, doctor of audiology
and founder of Applied Hearing Solutions
in Phoenix, Arizona.
And on this channel,
I cover a bunch of hearing related information
to help make you a better informed consumer.
So if you're into that,
make sure you hit that subscribe button
and don't forget to click the bell
to receive a notification every time I post a new video.
If you're a hearing aid user,
you've probably already asked yourself,
am I hearing the best I possibly can with my hearing aids.
After all, you probably spent good money
on quality hearing aids
and you probably even went through
an entire fitting process
with your hearing care professional.
So why wouldn't you be hearing your best?
Then why is it that every single time
I ask a new patient with existing hearing aids
that comes into my clinic
if they feel like they're hearing
their best with hearing aids,
every single one of them says they have no idea.
You see, hearing your best is all relative.
Meaning that your best is different
from somebody else's best
because everybody has their own ceiling of performance.
You just need to make sure
that you are hitting your ceiling.
So how is it possible to identify
if you are hearing your best,
not just a little bit better?
Well, that's why I'm gonna cover four things
that can be done to ensure that you are hearing
your absolute best with hearing aids.
The first thing that you can do
is find a hearing care professional
who follows a person-centered care approach
to hearing health care.
This means that your provider will take the time necessary
to identify your specific wants, needs and values
and include you in the decision-making
and treatment recommendation process.
This way you'll be confident
that you understand why they are making
certain clinical decisions and recommendations.
When you're included in this decision-making
and treatment process, you actually feel more empowered,
giving you more self-efficacy so you can feel confident
that everything that can be done
to improve your hearing is actually being done.
The second way to ensure that you're hearing your best
is to get the best hearing aid technology
that you can reasonably afford.
A few weeks back I posted a video where I talked
about several case studies inside of my clinic
where I was comparing premium technology
to advanced-level technology.
While the objective and subjective data
that we collected during those case studies
showed that there was no significant difference
between premium and advanced-level technology,
100% of the participants blindly selected
the premium technology as being more superior
to the advanced technology.
While there is no guarantee that you'll hear
significantly better with premium-level technology,
there will always be that question in the back of your head
if you're actually hearing your best
if you go with a lower level of tech.
So whether or not you can afford the premium technology
or just the basic level of technology,
always go with the highest level of technology
that you can reasonably afford
that way you can remove all doubt.
The third way to ensure that you're hearing
your absolute best with hearing aids
is to find a Best Practice Pro
when getting your new set of hearing aids
or when getting your existing set
of hearing aids reprogrammed.
A Best Practice Pro is a hearing care professional
who is committed to following best practices
when testing your hearing,
selecting the most appropriate hearing aids for you,
fitting those hearing aids
and providing you with excellent follow-up care.
Best Practice Pros are also committed to acting
as a fiduciary on your behalf.
Which means that they are always going to do
what is in your best interest.
Now if you don't know what best practices are,
they are basically a set of procedures
that hearing care professionals can follow to ensure
that they are maximizing your performance
with hearing treatment.
A few of these best practices include real ear measurement,
test box measures and validation outcome measures,
which are all extremely necessary
in identifying whether or not you're receiving
the maximum amount of benefit from your hearing aids.
Without these critical verification
and validation procedures,
it is 100% impossible to know if you're actually getting
the most out of your devices.
Finding a Best Practice Pro is easy.
All you have to do is go to drcliffaud.com
and click on the find a local provider tab.
Then scroll down to the provider map
and search your area for the closest Best Practice Pro.
When you find them, click more info.
After learning more about the Best Practice Pro
in your area, simply give them a call
or click on the schedule button to request an appointment.
The Best Practice Pro network
is vetting new providers each and every week
and is limited to only the best hearing care professionals
who follow best practices.
So you can be confident
that they'll get you hearing your best.
And the fourth and and final way to ensure that
you're hearing your absolute best with your hearing aids
is to have consistent follow-up care.
I see it all the time.
Patients coming in,
telling me that they're hearing just fine
with their hearing aids.
And after I get done doing a hearing evaluation,
running diagnostic checks on their hearing aids
and running a prescription check,
we always identify something
that gets them hearing even better.
How could that be?
I mean, if someone feels like they're hearing fine,
what could you possibly do to
actually improve their hearing any more?
Well, the simple fact of the matter is
is that our brains play tricks on us.
They make us think that we're actually hearing well
when we're not hearing well at all.
And the good news is, when we use objective measurements,
we can actually identify the areas
that are going wrong so we can fix them
and actually bring you back up to where you should be.
And this is why you should have
regular follow-up visits pre-scheduled
with your hearing care professional.
So they can perform these objective measures on you
to identify if the hearing aids
are actually still performing at their best.
If you just wait until things are bad enough
to actually schedule an appointment to go in
and see your hearing care professional,
there's likely been a problem brewing for quite some time
and who knows how long you've actually been going
without hearing the best you possibly can.
So how often is often enough
when it comes to follow-up care?
Well, in my clinic, I recommend that my patients
pre-schedule every three to six months
so they can come in, we can check their ears,
clean their hearing aids and check their hearing aids.
Every 12 months, I have them come back in
so we can re-evaluate their hearing,
we can run their hearing aids
through diagnostic test box measures
and we can also perform real ear measurement
to verify if their hearing aids are still amplifying
appropriately to the level of their hearing loss.
Point being, as long as you have a hearing care professional
who is committed to being proactive rather than reactive,
then the greater the likelihood of you actually operating
at the top of your performance range.
At the end of the day, if you do these four things,
then you can be confident
that you're going to be hearing your absolute best
so you can be the best hearing version of yourself.
That's it for this video.
If you have any questions,
leave them in the comment section below.
If you like the video, pleasure share it.
If you wanna see other videos just like this one,
go ahead and hit that subscribe button.
Also feel free to check out my website, drcliffaud.com.
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