Some skills and abilities are particularly useful in working with special needs children in a rehabilitative hospital. It helps to know how—and be willing—to:

• Stay calm when a child pulls everything off during a test.
• Change to another test procedure quickly if you are losing a child’s attention.
• Get on the floor to test a child.
• Play games to make the testing procedure fun.
• Be flexible—work around the schedules of the patient and other therapists who treat that patient.
• Manage wheelchairs, IV units, and feeding machines in the soundproof booth.
• Perform hearing evaluations at bedside—sometimes with excessive room noise.
• Replace or suction secretions out of a tracheotomy tube.
• Manage aggressive behavior.
• Accept that babies may throw up on you.
• Move quickly when toys get thrown at you.
• Keep tape and extra electrodes available when electrodes are snatched off in the middle of a brainstem auditory evoked response evaluation.
• Know when to back off when a child is too fussy or tired.
• Keep a child from pulling tympanometry probes and insert phones out of their ears, while trying to keep them from sliding off the chair.
• Handle questions from adolescents who ask, “Why do I need a hearing test?” and from families who ask, “What are you doing with my baby?”
• And last—but certainly not least—be sensitive and _informative, especially when you tell a family that their child has a hearing loss.