Aural Rehabilitation
Aural rehabilitation services help you adjust positively to your hearing loss. Having a clear understanding of your hearing loss is critical to successful aural rehabilitation. During this process, your test results will be explained. For example, the audiologists may address why it sounds like people mumble or why you can hear people but cannot always understand them. And, you’ll learn why some voices are harder to hear than others and best communication strategies to combat this issue. It is strongly encouraged that family members attend aural rehabilitation so they can have a full understanding of your hearing loss. Additionally, they may learn good communication strategies.
During this stage, treatment options will be discussed. These include hearing aids, assistive listening devices and possible referral for surgical consult.
If the best course of treatment for your hearing loss is amplification, you will be aided in the selection process. If you already use amplification, programming changes may be necessary to better meet the needs of your hearing loss. Patients often adapt quicker to their hearing aids when they have realistic expectations of the devices and are able to troubleshoot any potential issues.
Aural rehabilitation may be an ongoing process. As your partner in hearing, we will always be available to assist you with your changing hearing needs.
DID YOU KNOW?
In children, aural rehabilitation is an extremely important process because hearing loss can have a detrimental impact on the child’s speech and language development.
In these cases, audiologists are part of a team that helps a child improve his or her speech by practicing sounds, controlling volume, and rate of speech. This team helps them identify and interpret non-verbal communicative clues, locate sign language instructional services, and employ the benefits of peer support networks and other agencies.
Often, when timely aural rehabilitation is received, hearing-impaired children are able to communicate on an equal level as their non-hearing impaired peers.
