If you are new to visiting a hearing care professional, there are a few things you may like to know before your appointment. Upon arrival, your hearing care professional will discuss your hearing history to better understand your needs and what factors have influenced your hearing. Following the get-to-know-you questions, you will be given a hearing exam, which may also include a listening experience with a hearing device for practice and to gauge the levels of your hearing loss.

Your hearing aid professional will take some time to examine your results and will then explain them to you in thorough and helpful detail. Depending on how your hearing is, your ear care professional may recommend hearing aids, and spend some time with you going over your options.

If this is your first visit, many people prefer to bring along a family member or friend to their appointment. This may help you feel more comfortable sharing your hearing experience.

It’s helpful to know a bit about your hearing before arriving at your hearing assessment. So, how does hearing work exactly? It’s actually your brain that does the hearing. Our ears and brain work together. Your ears funnel information into the hearing system and your brain processes the information into meaningful sound.

Now that you know a bit about how your hearing works, you should also know why it’s important to get it checked. When you have hearing loss, your ears lose their abilities to pick up certain sounds. This in turn forces your brain to work harder to “fill in the gaps” of what is being said. This requires a ton of mental resources that can leave you feeling exhausted and can even result in increased risk of dementia. (this will link to our other blog post)

Before you come in for your visit to Audiology First, think about what how much noise you may have been exposed to during your lifetime (loud concerts, working in construction, always wearing protective ear covering, etc.) so you can share that information with us.

We may also wish to know about previous hearing tests you may have had, ear infections, surgeries on the ears, head injuries, medications, your family history of hearing problems, dizziness and balance problems, ringing in the ears and a whole range of other questions relating to your hearing.

Also consider how your hearing seems on a day-to-day basis. Is your brain working harder than it should?

Here is a list of some of the things you should consider:

Please contact us if you have any further questions before your hearing assessment. It is important to us that you get the best possible results moving forward!