- In this video, I'm talkin' about
best practice guidelines for hearing aids.
Comin' up.
(funky hip hop music)
Hi, guys, Cliff Olson, doctor of audiology
and founder of Applied Hearing Solutions
in Anthem, 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
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I post a new video.
Many industries have best practice guidelines.
Take surgeons for example,
one of the best practices for surgeons
before they go in and perform a surgery
is to actually wash their hands.
Even though they wear surgical gloves,
the washing of their hands reduces
the risk of spreading infection.
There are very specific published
best practice guidelines on how to perform
this procedure to ensure that they reduce
the risk of spreading infection as much as possible.
In the hearing industry we also have
best practice guidelines that we should
be following to ensure that we're doing things
the right way.
One of these best practices that I talk about
all the time is real ear measurement.
This is one of the most important things
that you need to have done
when being fit with hearing aids,
but it is only one small part
of best practice guidelines.
There are a bunch of other guidelines
that should be followed
when evaluating and treating hearing loss.
So, I wanna provide you with a general overview
of these best practice guidelines
so you can have a better understanding
of what a hearing care provider
should be doing to ensure
that you get the most out of your treatment.
The American Academy of Audiology
formed a task force of some of
the hearing industry's most educated
and highly respected audiologists
to develop best practice guidelines
for the Audiologic Management of Adult Hearing Impairment.
I won't be able to go in depth
on each best practice presented in this guideline,
but we'll be providing you with an overview
to help you understand the foundations
of best practices for adult hearing assessment
and treatment.
Stay tuned for other videos
while I will break down each of these sections
in more detail.
These guidelines were developed
based on the review of evidence
and provides recommendations
on four general areas.
Assessment and goal setting,
technical aspects of treatment,
orientation, counseling, and follow-up,
and assessing outcomes.
First, let's talk about assessment and goal setting.
There are several things that should be performed
before even considering hearing treatment.
You should have a comprehensive case history,
you should have otoscopy performed,
which is when a hearing care provider
will look inside of your ears,
you should have ear wax removal performed if necessary,
and then you should be having a hearing assessment
followed by a needs assessment.
A hearing assessment will result
in the diagnosis of the type and severity
of your hearing loss
and a possible medical referral
to a licensed physician if necessary.
They should also be reviewing the results
of this hearing test with you
and whoever came with you to your appointment.
And then, and only then, can candidacy
for hearing devices be considered.
A lifestyle needs assessment should be completed
prior to your hearing evaluation
or following your hearing evaluation
so the hearing care provider
can get a really good understanding
of what your needs are
so they can consider this when recommending
actual devices for you.
If a complete understanding of your hearing loss
and your needs is not obtained,
then the hearing care provider
is not gonna have enough information
to make a really good recommendation
on your treatment.
Identifying your goals for treatment
are also very important at this particular phase.
If your hearing care provider doesn't know
what things you want to actually hear better,
it's going to be very hard to evaluate
after the fitting to determine
if your goals have been met.
Now, the second area that these
best practice guidelines cover
is the technical aspect of treatment.
This encompasses hearing aid selection,
quality control, fitting and verification,
and hearing assistive technology.
Now, when it comes to hearing aid selection,
there are a ton of criteria that go into this.
I mean, do you need one hearing aid
or do you need two hearing aids?
Do you need a bone anchored hearing aid?
Do you need a device that does CROS
or BiCROS or AmpCROS?
Do you want a volume control,
do you need a telecoil in there,
do you need wireless connectivity with a smartphone?
There are a ton of things
that your hearing care provider
should be taking into consideration
before jumping to a conclusion
of a particular hearing aid.
Then after landing on a particular hearing aid,
you need to make sure quality control is done.
This is when a hearing aid comes into a clinic,
they actually hook those hearing aids up
to do a test box measure
which will tell the hearing care professional
if those devices are actually performing
in the way that they should.
Quality control is also extremely important
after you already have your hearing devices
because this is how a hearing care professional
will determine if those devices are malfunctioning
when you come in for repairs.
These test box measures are also extremely important
down the road when hearing aids get sent off for repair
and when they come back to make sure
that they're actually performing
up to manufacturer's specifications.
Then you have fitting and verification.
And this is where real ear measurement falls into place.
Because real ear measurement is a form
of hearing aid verification
to ensure or verify that your hearing aids
are programmed correctly to your hearing loss prescription.
But the physical fit of a hearing device
is also extremely important.
In fact, I think that this is one of the most
important things about a hearing aid
because if it's not comfortable,
if it's not fit right to your ears,
then you're not gonna wear it.
And perhaps one of the most overlooked things
when it comes to the technical aspect of treatment
is the discussion of hearing assistive technologies.
Sometimes hearing aids alone just aren't enough
and there are tests that we can perform
during a hearing assessment to determine
whether or not you need to use some form
of an accessory to help you hear better.
If you go into a noisy situation
and you have a really bad speech and noise ability,
then you are going to have to use
some kind of assistive hearing technology
to help you cut through that background noise.
Devices like a remote microphone
can be the difference between you actually hearing
and understanding the person
that you're with inside of a noisy environment
and not hearing them at all.
Third is orientation, counseling, and follow-up.
A really good orientation can be the difference
between you having success with your hearing aids
and not having success with your hearing aids.
During an orientation you should be going over things
like how to actually put your hearing aids on
and in your ears,
how to make volume adjustments,
how to use the telecoil,
how to talk on the telephone
with your hearing aids,
and a variety of other things
that you really need to know how to do.
Following your orientation,
counseling and follow-up care
are also extremely important for a success
with hearing treatment.
There are going to be things
that you're gonna experience
when wearing hearing aids
that you really need to have a hearing care professional
kind of help you understand.
And if you don't have access to that
you're gonna be wondering,
are these things normal that I'm hearing
or is that really how I'm supposed to hear
in this environment?
A hearing care professional can actually
go over those things with you
to ensure that you understand
what's actually happening.
And then in terms of follow-up care,
your ability to have success long-term
requires you to have follow-up care
with your hearing care professional.
There's gonna be things that they do
with your hearing aids to ensure
that they're constantly programmed correctly
to your hearing loss prescription.
And if there's other maintenance issues that arise
they can handle them before they
become a big issue.
If you receive really good counseling
and follow-up care
then your success with hearing treatment
will go up dramatically,
and if you don't receive these things
then your success with hearing treatment
will go down dramatically.
Fourth you have the outcome assessment.
And where real ear measurement is a form of verification,
outcome assessments are typically forms
of validation.
This is where the use of a validated
outcome measurement tool
following their hearing aid fitting
is recommended.
You have tools like the hearing handicap inventory
for the elderly,
you have the abbreviated profile
of hearing aid benefit,
and then you have my personal favorite,
the client oriented scale of improvement.
Completing one of these validated outcome measures
at the end of your hearing aid fitting process
will ensure that you're actually getting
the benefit that you were looking for
out of your hearing aids.
If we don't evaluate how much benefit you're getting,
we never really know if we did a good job or not.
Following these best practices
ensures that you have the best opportunity
to receive the maximum amount of benefit
from your hearing treatment.
Now, there are hearing care providers
who do all of these best practices,
and there is a good amount of them out there.
However, finding which ones they are
is extremely difficult.
That's why I'm starting the Doctor Cliff Approved
Provider Network.
Beginning in October of 2019,
you'll be able to go to my website,
DrCliffAuD.com and you'll be able to locate
a hearing care provider close to you
who follows these best practices
to ensure that you get the most
out of your hearing treatment.
I am requiring these hearing care providers
actually come to my course
to ensure that they understand
which best practices they absolutely
have to be following to be able to make it
into the network,
and then I will vet them to ensure that they
actually follow these best practices.
So, if high level care is really what you're after,
then go to DrCliffAuD.com and save it as a bookmark
so when October rolls around
you can click on that website
and find a great hearing care provider near you.
That's it for this video.
If you have any questions leave them
in the comment section below.
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I'll see you next time.
(light hip hop music)