View Tag: ‘dispensing’
Volume 8
Dispensing Audiologists—They Once Walked a Lonely Road
Fifty years ago, audiologists who heeded an inner call to help people with hearing loss through personal hands-on marketing of hearing aids were labeled as “unethical.” Thanks to our friends at Hearing Review, we’re pleased to reprint the stories of four masters degree audiologists who were among the very first to venture into dispensing hearing aids: Jim Curran, John Schuneman, Mel Sorkowitz, and Otis Whitcomb.
How I Became Unethical
James Curran looks back at a time when, if an audiologist dispensed (sold) a hearing aid, it was considered unethical behavior by the American Speech and Hearing Association (ASHA) and resulted in membership expulsion and loss of professional certification.
Volume 4
US Food and Drug Administration Commitment to OTC Hearing Aids: Reflections for Canadian Practice
Reframing the role of audiology is based on the assumption that the value of a good or service is defined by the customer. Those that produce the good or service are more successful when they have a clear understanding of these customer specifications and tailor the features of their product to match. If a gap exists between what customers identify as valuable and what is readily available, it presents an opportunity for those that produce the good or service to close that gap by modernizing what they produce. This is an ongoing challenge for audiologists, since what customers want and value often changes regularly over time.
Not Selling Hearing Aids and Its Effect on the Audiology Profession: A Comparison between Québec and Ontario
What would audiology be like if audiologists would have never been granted the right to sell hearing aids? Although it’s impossible to go back in time, this question can still be partly answered by what could be called a case-control study. Indeed, there exist one province in Canada—Québec—where audiologists are not allowed to sell hearing aids.