Welcome to the Conference

Session #1: Health History, Health Conditions, and Comorbidities for the Hearing Healthcare Provider
Presented by Carrie Meyer, AuD - Read their bio!

Our patients are becoming more aware of their hearing and how it impacts their health. Research on the relationship between hearing loss and dementia, depression and falls with injury is showing up on the news and on social media. As hearing healthcare professionals, how do we use this information to educate our patients on the health implications of untreated hearing loss without causing anxiety and fear? This presentation will teach you how to take a complete patient history and use patient history and symptoms to help you create a better assessment and treatment plan. Then we will dive into the research on comorbidities and health conditions associated with hearing loss to improve your understanding of how common chronic health conditions affect hearing health and how hearing loss impacts the “big three” – dementia, depression, and falls with injury.

1.5 Continuing Education Credits

Break

Session #2: Counseling During the Hearing Aid Fitting
Presented by Kaitlyn Angelozzi, MSc, RAUD, RHIP - Read their bio!

The impact of counselling has been investigated at some stages of the hearing health journey, including hearing testing, hearing aid consultation, and hearing aid follow-up. Previous research has developed visual counselling tools for hearing aid fitting; however, by better understanding the verbal aspect of counselling during hearing aid fitting, clinicians can begin to better support their clients in adopting their hearing aids. This session will present the results of a working group of experienced clinicians from across Canada, which generated a list of the key ideas to communicate during REM informational counselling. The key ideas were in turn used by the working group to create a modifiable script that clinicians can use when conducting REM informational counselling. In addition, a comparison between the clinician and client perspective on counselling during REM will be drawn. Audience members will be asked to reflect on their own counselling phrases and compare them to those generated by research participants. Throughout the course of the lecture, audience members will learn to evaluate for themselves the importance and feasibility of individual counselling phrases, and thus identify phrases that are appropriate for use in their own practice. For newer clinicians in the audience, the modifiable script is an opportunity to critically think about the material to be covered during counselling, as well as a starting point for their own counselling script.

1.0 Continuing Education Credit

Lunch Break
Enjoy this lunch break on you own before we return for our afternoon sessions.

Introducing the Afternoon Sessions & Drawing* for the FREE Tinnitus Care Provider Workshop registration
*All who registered before April 5^th  are entered into this drawing for the FREE workshop. The winner does not need to be present and will also be notified by email.

Session #3: Objective Hearing Aid Validation With the MSTB-3
Presented by Mary Rose Goldstein, AuD, CCC-A, F-AAA - Read their bio!

Prior research has established that approximately 20% of patients have clinically significant speech perception gaps and are underperforming with hearing aids. Although a vast majority of clinicians include unaided speech recognition in their audiological evaluation, only about 32% of hearing care professionals evaluate word recognition with hearing aids in place. Such testing provides insight into the communication difficulties the patient experiences when using amplification, informs the patient and clinician of the benefits and limitations of optimized amplification for each patient, and guides the clinician in making appropriate rehabilitative recommendations. I will discuss the MSTB3 (Minimum Speech Test Battery Version 3) and how it can be used to provide patient-centric care that incorporates aided word recognition testing along with real-ear measures and patient satisfaction questionnaires. Case studies will be presented that demonstrate how aided word testing should be included in the minimum standard of care for evidence-based validation of hearing aid fittings. I will also discuss speech perception gaps and how calculation of such is meaningful for both patient and clinician.

1.5 Continuing Education Credits

Break

Session #4: There is More to Speech Recognition Than Meets the Ear: Improving Speech Perception in Noise Through Multisensory Training
Co-Presented by Nicole Jordan, AuD - Read their Bio! & Ed Auer - Read their Bio!

Speech recognition in noisy environments is typically improved by watching the talker. The magnitude of improvement is related to the perceiver’s lipreading, which is typically poor in individuals with adult-onset hearing loss. Multisensory speech training is a rehabilitative option for improving outcomes in individuals with difficulty in listening noise. We will present a foundational contemporary view of the phenomena associated with multisensory speech recognition. We will discuss recent successful approaches to speech perception training using feedback on perceptual errors in an open-set sentence recognition task. We will explore benefits of a computerized feedback system along with opportunities for future clinical applications.

1.0 Continuing Education Credit