Frequently Asked Questions

What causes hearing loss? How do I know if I have a hearing loss?

Hearing loss may be inherited, or acquired during childhood or adulthood. Examples of causes of hearing loss include; the result of the ageing process, due to exposure to loud noise, an ear or head injury, specific medications or disease-related process. In most clients, hearing can be improved with hearing aids.

Do you:

  • Frequently ask people to repeat what they said,
  • miss jokes,
  • complain that people mumble,
  • play the TV or radio louder than others,
  • have difficulty hearing the doorbell or telephone
  • and need to watch the speaker’s face to understand what they said?

If you answered YES to any of these questions, you may have a hearing loss and need a hearing aid.

Are all hearing aids the same? Will I have a problem adjusting to my hearing aids?

No, hearing aids are not all the same and vary in technology, price and fitting. We will evaluate your hearing and select the hearing aid suitable for YOU!

Hearing aids usually require some initial ‘fine-tuning.’ These adjustments are usually done in the clinic. You might need a period of time initially to adjust to your hearing aid. We therefore recommend that you begin wearing your hearing aids for only a few hours each day and add an additional hour a day when you feel comfortable until you are wearing your hearing aids for most of the time. Once you are used to your hearing aids, you should be more satisfied with your hearing and be more confident in communicating with others.

Will I need 1 or 2 hearing aids?

If you have a hearing loss in both ears, you will require two hearing aids; particularly to enable the two ears to work in synchrony as well as localise sound (tell where sound is coming from) and effectively hear warning signals and conversational speech.

What are Assistive Listening Devices (ALDs)?

ALDs are not hearing aids. They are listening devices that assist you with your listening in specific situations e.g. to hear the TV or radio. These devices make the sound louder or make an auditory signal into a visual signal (e.g. the telephone ringing is adjusted to become a flashing light).

When should I have my child’s speech, language and/or literacy assessed?

Children of all ages can be tested. If you are concerned about your child’s pronunciation of sounds, listening abilities, literacy or language development, an assessment may be required. Early identification is best!

Intervention (if required) may involve frequent reviews, a home program, parent training, educational counselling, individual or group therapy.

What is a speech, language and/or literacy assessment?

Depending on the nature of the difficulty, a speech, language and/or literacy assessment protocol will be chosen and may include client observation, questionnaire completion and/or administration of formal tests. Assessment results provide information regarding appropriate goal selection and therapy planning.

What is a Central Auditory Processing assessment?

A Central Auditory Processing assessment is conducted by specialized Audiologists and involves the administration of a battery of listening tests (delivered via the audiometer in a sound-proof room) to determine the nature of the auditory processing difficulty. A variety of supplementary auditory-based language and literacy tasks may also be administered to gain a wider picture of the child’s processing difficulty. Intervention (if required) may involve frequent reviews, a home program, parent training, educational counselling, individual or group therapy, classroom acoustic management, conversational training programs and fitting of FM systems (if suitable).