When people think of audiologists and hearing tests, they are immediately transported back in time to their days in grade school when the school nurse asked them to raise their hand when they heard the tone. Yes, we do test hearing with pure tones, but only to get an idea of what is heard in the important speech frequencies.
The hearing is also assessed with word lists of varying difficulties, depending on the age of the patient and their language abilities. If a hearing loss is identified, then questionnaires can also be given regarding how the hearing loss is REALLY effecting a person’s life outside the walls of the sound booth. With adults, the questions are related to how the patient is hearing and communicating in different situations, ie. television, restaurants, at home, etc. With children, depending on if they have any speech and language skills, the questions are regarding how often they respond to different sounds in their environment, abilities to identify between different people’s voice, and abilities to repeat what they hear. All of these tools are helpful in measuring how much improvement a person is receiving after they have been fit with proper amplification, such as hearing aids or cochlear implants.
Looking back, after completing the questionnaire several times over a year, it is interesting to see the progress our patients make. Sometimes it can be difficult to know if the hearing aids or cochlear implants are working, but if we can measure an improvement in the communication abilities it’s certainly a start.
