What Do Hearing Health Professionals Do?

The average person generally won’t think of hearing health professionals on a regular basis. They’ll be aware that they take care of people’s auditory health and that will probably be as far as their interests go. But if you’ve been experiencing changes to your hearing or are experiencing hearing loss, you may grow more interested in what the professionals you will come into contact with will be able to help you with and what they will do to help resolve or correct issues that you may have. So, what does a hearing health professional do? Here’s some more information that can help you along the way!

Assessment and Identification of Hearing Conditions

One of the major roles of a hearing health professional is identifying, testing and diagnosing any disorders associated with hearing. This can include conditions that affect balance or may result in tinnitus too. This assessment is also carried out on newborn and young children through specialist hearing programs that can lead to an early diagnosis of hearing conditions. They can then counsel you on your hearing health or hearing conditions, getting you on the right path for treatment and management of your conditions. As well as this, hearing health professionals will assess whether you need hearing aids, cochlear implants or other audiological aids.

Treatment and Management of Hearing Conditions

Hearing health professionals’ responsibilities don’t end at diagnosis. They will also help to treat and manage your condition to ensure that you can lead the best quality of life as possible and minimize any further potential hearing loss. Some steps that they may take include:

• Examinations of the ear canal and ear drum to remove excessive cerumen or wax and to make ear impressions for hearing aids that you may need.
• Recommend hearing aids and help with their fitting and programming.
• Recommend alternative hearing assistive technology systems.
• Recommend and carry out auditory rehabilitation.
• Manage conditions such as tinnitus
• Counseling family and friends on hearing loss

Education

Hearing health professionals also often serve as educators. They can help patients with educational programming, classroom acoustics and recommending large area amplification systems. They are consequently often consulted on accessibility for people who have hearing loss in both the private and public sector – whether this is for buildings, programs or services. On top of this, they can also educate the general public on hearing conditions such as hearing loss and tinnitus. As you can see, hearing health professionals’ role expands much further than the average person may think. They have all sorts of responsibilities that you may have previously been entirely unaware that they had to carry out! Hopefully, some of the above information has given you a good insight into the day-to-day life of a hearing health professional!