Hear, Here

By: Dr. Dawn MacMillan, Audiologist Imagine this. You make the decision to eat better and lose a few pounds. You go to the grocery store and buy a cart full of fresh fruits, vegetables, and lean protein. You arrive home from the grocery store, put all the food away. You are ready to take control of your waistline! But the next time you go into the kitchen for a snack, you pick up a sugary, pre-packaged snack made by a lady named Debby. You repeat this over the next week, eating lunches out when friends ask, foamy coffee drinks when the late afternoon slump hits. You step on the scale and are shocked! What?!? You didn’t lose a single pound! Are you really shocked? Of course not! The fruits and veggies you bought are moldy and furry! You bought the food but didn’t get in the habit of eating it. Hearing aids are no different. You can have the test, buy the aids, have them professionally fit and that fitting verified but if that’s all you do when you leave their office, the hearin...

In the mid-late 1970's, the profession of Audiology went through a metamorphosis of sorts with regards to dispensing hearing aids. It was only thanks to a few brave, rebellious souls that permitted Audiologists to actually dispense hearing aids. Prior to that, hearing aid dispensers were the only ones allowed to fit hearing aids. Because of Audiology's early roots tied so closely to "speech correctionists" (now known as speech-language pathologists), the profession of Audiology has only recently started to separate itself from the field of speech pathology. Unfortunately for Audiology, it has been under the umbrella of Speech Pathology for so long, breaking free to pave the profession's own independent way has been difficult. This has not been easy.  Because hearing aid dispensers lumped the devices (i.e. the hearing aids) and the services to fit and maintain the hearing aids together as one price many, many years ago, that trend continued when Audiologists beg...