What to expect from a hearing assessment
First and foremost, we will listen to you – hearing loss is personal and we take the time to listen to your experiences.
We recommend that you bring someone with you as they can often provide useful information and support. Our hearing assessments usually take about 90 minutes.
We will ask some medical related questions so that we have a good understanding of your general health and history. Next we will examine your ears. We have the latest technology and can show you images of your ears on screen if you are interested in seeing. We thoroughly check your ears using state of the art video equipment and keep the images on your records so we can keep track of your ear health
A Full Hearing Test
Most hearing centers will measure the quietest sounds that you can hear and based on this will make a recommendation. Although this type of hearing test provides useful information, by no means does it provide a full picture, we hear with our ears but it is our brain that understands speech! With this in mind, we have designed our test protocol to ensure that we measure your exact individual issues.
At each stage, we will explain the results thoroughly to you and make sure that everything is completely clear.
What you can expect
We take you through a thorough hearing evaluation using the very latest audiometric equipment to record the quietest sounds that you can hear, but also importantly, the way that your brain is able to understand the signal from your ears. This involves testing your speech recognition in both quiet and in the presence of the dreaded background noise.
We perform tympanometry to check how the middle ear is working (this is a really simple comfortable test, and is nothing to be nervous about).
Occasionally we may feel that onward referral is required – this is unusual, but you can trust us to always do the right thing. All the results and recommendations are given to you in a report.
