Boston, MAWhat a great question! My key problem was that some audiologists don’t understand the technology they are fitting. Hearing aids are designed by engineers and fit by people who sometimes don’t have the background to understand the technology and give the patient all the benefits. Another part of my struggle was the focus on reception of speech without education about the complementary visual approaches that supplement or sometimes replace speech comprehension. I wanted to receive information, including in noisy environments. I didn’t care how it came to me. For me the breakthrough didn’t come until I was on a zoom call with an audiologist who said to me, “you don’t hear like other people.” That opened a different perspective on programming to me–an awareness of the parameters that needed to be tweaked so that my ears could transmit signal not garbage. Another hard part is the stigma about hearing loss that even some audiologists take into the clinic with their patients. Look at how an Australian hearing aid seller leveraged that to sell less visible with a photo of a shrimp behind a woman’s ear and the caption, “hearing aids can be ugly.” There were many upset parents of children after that ad was placed. What other industry gives themselves permission to insult their customers? To distill this on the positive side, I would look for a holistic approach enabling reception of information, fitting skills and a mutual respect in the audiologist patient relationship. The other pain points like cost, time to optimize and acceptance of loss can’t be fixed, but might be a little easier to bear.
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Canada (Toronto) YYZ