I came across a disturbing story today about a deaf woman in Tacoma, WA, who was tased inside her home and arrested. It was reported she made a 911 emergency call in distress. The operator told her to wait outside of the apartment for officers to arrive. The woman communicates via sign language and an interpreter. When the officers arrived, they ...

Throughout my first year in graduate school, we students were reminded of the delicacy of hearing loss. In particular, how patients may respond negatively and seemingly irrational to the bad news. Many times, the negative response is not confined to a few days, but persists of years. It could be the difficulty in accepting they have what is ...

I'm becoming more excited by the day to begin my fourth year. Not only the opportunity for full immersion into practicing audiology and, but also for the next set of endeavors I will have time to focus on. I really like the concept that each individual has something he or she can bring to the table to improve an area of interest. There are many ...

Our editorial mission focuses so strongly on practice management that it can be easy to glance over the real-life effects of the hearing health conditions that are at the core of everything we do. This thought recently screached into my conscious when I heard this NPR report on tinnitus. At random points in the ...

It's official. I have a high-frequency hearing loss. According to an online hearing test, that is. My highest threshold to date measured in the sound booth is a whopping 5 dB, which certainly indicates normal hearing sensitivity. Perhaps it is not my place yet to speak on this topic as a student, but I have a hard time believing that a movement ...

We are headed into what I like to refer to as the home stretch of the semester. Accordingly, I always create a Word document around this time frame called Home Stretch, which includes an all-encompassing to-do schedule. More often that not, it ends up longer than most of the papers I write for class. I suppose this is my best attempt at ...

I have officially started my new practicum placement at the VA hospital in North Little Rock. This placement also doubles as my assistantship, allowing for hourly pay and, more importantly, more practicum hours. In any given week, I may log 16-20 hours of practicum, which is solid for a third-year student. I was told that I would get more ...

The Minnesota Department of Health (MDH) issued a news release this week stressing the importance of consumers seeing a hearing health practitioner before purchasing hearing aids. Noting the increasing availability of options for purchasing hearing aids online, the state agency cautioned that hearing aids are regulated by the U.S. Food and Drug ...

The Better Hearing Institute issued a news release this week warning consumers of the inherent risks associated with purchasing over-the-counter, one-size-fits-all hearing aids instead of consulting a hearing healthcare professional. BHI supports this claim by stating that hearing loss is sometimes a symptom of a serious underlying medical ...

Early last week, I spent some time in the student room working on my directed research project and caught the tail end of a conversation some of the first-year students were having. A few made disparaging remarks regarding their stress level and each of them seemed weary. I could not help but grin a bit on the inside like a grizzled veteran who ...