Adult Aural/Audiologic
Rehabilitation
If you are an adult, aural/audiologic rehabilitation services
will focus on adjusting to your hearing loss, making the best use
of your hearing aids, exploring assistive devices that might
help, managing conversations, and taking charge of your
communication. Services can be individual, in small groups, or a
combination of both.
Topics typically covered include the following:
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Your hearing loss.
It is important to understand your specific hearing loss.
Sometimes it takes several discussions with your audiologist
and with your family for things to "click." By better
understanding your hearing loss, you will gain new insights
into why you think people are mumbling, why you
"hear" but cannot "understand," why you
have difficulty with female voices, and the other questions you
have been asking yourself for so long.
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Your family's understanding of your hearing
loss.
Your family does not know how you hear. What they do know is
that you do not hear well! They know they use lots of energy
trying to communicate with you. Sometimes, the audiologist will
play a recording that simulates your hearing loss so that your
family can understand better what you are going through.
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Your hearing aid.
What will your hearing aid do and what will it not do? When you
have realistic expectations, it is easier to adjust to your
hearing aid. Also, your audiologist should review how to take
care of your aid, how to troubleshoot problems, and answer any
of your questions. So much information is given to you at the
time of the hearing aid fitting that it is difficult to absorb
everything. Also, as you use your aid, more questions will come
to mind.
Many audiologists take this opportunity to review different
types of hearing aids and how they work. This helps you to
understand why your kind of hearing aid was selected specifically
for you.
This review also helps family members understand that your
hearing aid was a prescription for you. Often, well-meaning
family members and friends keep bringing you ads for other kinds
of hearing aids or talk about other friends who have
"better" hearing aids because they do not understand
that your hearing aid was chosen because it met the needs of your
hearing loss and your common communication situations.
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Learning to listen again.
Even if you don' t have hearing aids but have discovered
that you have a hearing loss, aural rehabilitation services can
give you strategies to improve listening and increase your
communication effectiveness. If you do have new hearing aids or
a cochlear implant, your world will be full of sounds you
forgot existed. You will be moving from what has become a quiet
world back to the normally noisy world in which we all live.
Through training and practice, you will acquire new listening
habits.
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Assistive listening devices.
A hearing aid won't wake you up when you are sleeping. A
hearing aid may not help you in a theater. But, there are many
other devices that can help, such as TV listening devices,
personal FM systems to use in lectures, conference microphones,
and telephone amplifiers. You can become acquainted with these
devices and see how they can improve your social, family, and
work life.
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Using visual clues.
Everyone uses their eyes to get clues about what people are
saying, their mood, their interest in the topic of
conversation, and so on. You probably are using your eyes even
more to make up for what you cannot hear.
Speechreading training provides formal instruction in how
speech sounds are made, which sounds look alike on the lips.
Learning which words have the same mouth movement but very
different meaning can be incredibly useful in increasing
understanding of conversations. You can also gain a great deal of
helpful information from following other visual clues like facial
expression, gestures, body movement, and body language. For
example, if you are not sure what was said, facial expression may
help you figure out whether the speaker said "I'm
mad" or "I'm sad." Broader observation of
factors like the physical environment, the context of the
conversation, and the people involved is also helpful in gaining
information about what was said or what might likely be said
next.
Audiologic rehabilitation
provides the person with a hearing loss and his or her family
with many listening strategies that can improve communication.
Some of these are as follows:
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Handling conversation.
By learning to take charge of your communication assertively
(not aggressively!), you can become a more effective
communicator. There are may ways to be assertive. You can ask
people to get your attention before speaking to you, suggest
that they face you, and ask them not to shout. Another way to
be assertive is to learn and use strategies for handling
communication breakdowns. Know when to ask for a
"rephrase" instead of a "repeat", know how
to apply a clarification strategy, and learn how to ask
questions.
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Arrangement of your home.
Now that you've learned more about your hearing loss, you
may want to rearrange your furniture to promote easier
conversation (and that full-face view mentioned above). You
might wish to change lighting so you can better see your
conversation partner's face. Perhaps carpeting can be
strategically placed to absorb noise. Maybe there are alerting
devices that can help you identify when the doorbell
rings.
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Dealing with background noise outside the home.
In a noisy restaurant, for example, request a table further
away from the kitchen and clattering dishes. Seat yourself
directly in front of your dining companion so that you can
maximize your understanding of conversation.
Your legal rights.
Today there are laws such as the Americans with Disabilities Act
that provide for accommodations for people with hearing loss in
the workplace and in public meeting places like hospitals,
courtrooms, and places of worship.
Support groups.
You are not the only one with a hearing loss. Joining a support
group will give you the opportunity to learn from others'
experiences. How do they handle traveling, meetings,
appointments, going to the hospital, telephone conversations,
hearing in theaters, difficult family members or work associates?
Have they used assistive listening devices? What has worked?
Support groups are excellent forums for problem solving and
mutual support. They are also good for your sense of humor - an
essential ingredient for coping with a hearing loss!
There are national support groups for adults with hearing
loss. The groups below also have local chapters.