Read the full transcript here

On today’s episode, you’ll hear from Dr. Brian Taylor,  who is an audiologist as well as the director of clinical content development at Signia. Brian grew up in Northwest Wisconsin. He is also the author of a textbook titled: Relationships Centered Communication. During the first half of his career, he worked as a clinical audiologist in EMT practices in the Chicagoland area. He then worked for Sonus which was acquired by a company in Italy called Amplifon. He then spent some time at Unitron, and even moved to Italy for a bit where he worked for The global Amplifon group. Most currently, he is a proud member of the Signia.

6:00 – There are many stigmas that may get in the way of a consumer’s decision-making process. Styletto, Silk, and Active are all Signia brands that are types of devices that do not look like hearing aids and are ways to eliminate the barrier surrounding such stigmas.

11:00 – One can help fight against such stigma by having a conversation centered around all the positive outcomes that could occur if a patient were to take the next step upon their hearing-aid journey.

16:00 – As a consumer, you should feel comfortable with the professional that you’re working with, you want to make sure that you’re not being rushed and that you feel comfortable to ask questions. Pretty early in the appointment, you want to feel like the trust and rapport building. 

18:00 – Avoiding certain places or relying on somebody else to be your communicator are maladaptive behaviors that an individual without a proper hearing device may get accustomed to. Thus, it is crucial to work with a professional that’s going to help you rethink your condition and acquire some better, more productive, kinds of communication behaviors.

21:00 – It is important for a loved one to sit in when a patient meets with their clinician because the loved one can reflect on how the use of hearing aids is not only helping the person wearing them, but also the individual(s) that spends a lot of time with them.

23:00 – Some of the positive outcomes of COVID include more usage of telehealth and remote care. Signia has a telehealth app that was kind of underutilized pre-COVID and now after COVID, a lot more people are comfortable using it.

30:00 – Age does not play a factor in who will and who will not be able to utilize hearing aid technologies such as artificial intelligence and machine learning.

32:00 – For reassurance, hearing aid data is anonymized data. Also, if somebody doesn’t want their data being shared, it is okay to just turn all those settings off.

35:00 – There is a journey from being unaware of the problem to accepting that you need to do something about it. And that process, if you see a professional, they might be able to speed that process up and help you sooner rather than later. This will prevent problems down the line such as developing depressive symptoms, dementia, or cognitive decline.

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Email Brian at brian.taylor@wsa.com

Mentioned in this episode:

Professor Meg Walhagen

Relationships Centered Communication

The Ida Institute

Professor Barbara Weinstein

JAMA Otolaryngology

Ear and Hearing

Related Episodes: 

Transcript:

Lilach Saperstein:

Welcome back to the All About Audiology Podcast. I’m your host, Dr. Lilach Saperstein and on this show, we talk about audiology and how it affects your life. It’s not just about hearing aids and hearing tests and X’s and O’s, but it’s actually really about how to communicate, how to connect with people, and I’m very excited to welcome today’s guest, Dr. Brian Taylor, who is an audiologist and the director of clinical content development at Signia. And so we’re going to be speaking about the latest and greatest in hearing aid technology, and also more about your history, your background, and your role with audiology in general, and particularly something that is very close to my heart and a big part of why I got into the field, talking about the stigma about hearing aids, especially for middle-aged, you know, young adults, middle-aged, I think there’s a lot of stigmas there. So welcome to the show. How are you doing?

Brian Taylor:

Great. Thanks for having me on your podcast, Dr. Saperstein, I appreciate it.

LS:

Awesome. So tell us a little bit about your background in audiology. How did you even come into the field?

BT:

Well, it goes back about 30 years ago. Like a lot of folks in audiology, I started off in speech pathology and found myself after one audiology class more interested in the hearing component than the speech component for various reasons. Just to give you a little bit about my background, I grew up on a farm in Northwest Wisconsin, about two or three hours from Minneapolis—that’s where I live now. And the first half of my career, I worked as a clinical audiologist in a couple of EMT practices in the Chicagoland area found myself in a private practice. This goes back about 20 years ago, also in the Chicagoland area. That private practice was acquired by a company by the name of Sonus, and if you’re over the age of 40, you might remember Sonus, who was one of the first large kind of corporate audiology entities. Sonus was acquired by a company in Italy called Amplifon. Amplifon’s headquarters are in Minneapolis. Amplifon also owns the Miracle Ear brand. And anyway, I found myself 18 years ago, moving from Chicago to Minneapolis where I’ve been and worked. I spent some time at Unitron. I spent some time in Italy as part of the global Amplifon group and am most currently a proud member of the Signia Group. Anyway, that’s my background.

LS:

Yeah, I think that’s super, super interesting, especially for young audiologists, and communication disorder students who are looking at their career options, and [thinking] ‘what are my options if I go into this field?’ And the very common thing that you mentioned was, I went in for a speech, and then that audiology class hooked me. You know, it’s kind of like, when you see the light, you’re like, oh, this fun, this is puzzles and technology, and devices. Maybe I’m into this more?

BT:

Yeah, no, that’s what’s great about audiology, it kind of combines a lot of different things, you know: The device component, you have the psychology component, the medical component, so it covers a lot of interesting territory.

LS:

Exactly. And so I wonder if you want to say a few words about working in the industry, you know, I’m very blunt. I say how it is. And sometimes there’s this feeling where, you know, the young, especially when we’re so idealistic, med school, on to do everything great. And then it’s like, uh-oh, the industry is like, selling your soul, having me on the side of things, but I think there’s so much opportunity. So I’d love to hear your thoughts having all the experience you have.

BT:

I always like to say there’s the industry component—there’s the industry, and there’s the profession. And they’re two different things. Obviously, the profession is really what you’re doing in clinical practice like seeing patients, you know, and really what’s interesting about the profession, in my opinion, is, we have you know, the medical model where we’re trying to diagnose hearing disorders, we work pretty closely with ENTs and other physicians on hearing and balance issues. And then there’s the chronic care component, where once you’ve ruled out a medical condition that can be treatable, it’s all about trying to help somebody hear better, and that usually revolves around devices, cochlear implants, hearing aids, so on and so forth. And then what’s interesting is that’s rapidly expanding. But in industry, I think it’s always about trying to bring innovation, put that in the hands of clinicians, and we really need to work hand in glove, the profession in the industry. There’s a whole lot of crossover.

LS:

Yeah, absolutely. And it’s not like we can say, you know, we need the devices. [Laughs] We need if we want to reach our, our outcomes, you know, clinical outcome—

BT:

Exactly. It’s hard. It’s really hard to make the argument that a person that has sensory neural hearing loss is going to be—I mean, there are cases where you could say a person doesn’t really need any kind of device, but 90 out of 100 times somebody needs a device as part of their treatment plan.

LS:

Sure, and I’m glad also that you mentioned, you know, the different ways to look at audiology, many times a medical model, but there’s also a huge counseling component, which is what I do with my retreats and international clients because I think there’s so much room for audiologists to help people along this journey that is not focused on the clinical side, like there could be room for both of them.

BT:

Oh, no doubt about it. I think that’s kind of an underappreciated component of audiology is the counseling. Yeah, sure.

LS:

So I’d love to hear more about what you think when we talk about hearing aid stigma, what are the biggest barriers for people? Would you say it is stigma or something else that keeps people from getting help?

BT:

Well, I think the stigma is a big part of it. That’s a really interesting, very broad question that you asked. I think that the heart of this question really is expanding the market. You know, somewhere between 15, only 15 to 30% of people that have a disabling hearing loss, are wearing any type of device. And then the next question is, well, why is that important? Well, it’s important because we know that untreated hearing loss is associated with a lot of other really challenging conditions, everything from dementia, depression, loneliness, social isolation, and increased medical expense costs – are all associated with untreated hearing loss, not to mention that if you have a hearing loss, you’re not going to communicate very effectively with your family and friends. So that’s the first component of the question is how do we broaden the market, or how do we expand the market? And why isn’t the market then expanded—cost, access, are certainly issues, but one that maybe flies under the radar is certainly stigma. And that’s a written in from—when I think about stigma, and you’re probably familiar with the work of Meg Walhagen, she has really well—a paper published maybe 10 years ago around stigma, and how that’s related to hearing loss. What I recall is, there’s a lot of multifaceted issue around ageism, somebody’s perception of their own self-perception, their own inability to want to maybe get involved in the process, because they don’t like the way the hearing aids look. They think that’s associated with being old, and decrepit. And I think one thing I’m really proud of, in my role at Signia, is that I think we have brought to market some, I’ll call them stigma-busting devices that I think address this condition. One product that came to market a few years ago, one form factor is Styletto. Another is Silk—that’s what we call an invisible in the canal aid, and then more recently, a device called Active. Those are all form factors that are designed and really geared, I think to address the stigma issue.

LS

What you’re saying is they’re so small or sleek or hidden that they’re not as seen as—

BT:

Yeah, that’s a big part of it. They don’t look like hearing aids. In fact, we’ve collected internal data surveys that I hope that we published sometime soon, that show that a lot of consumers don’t think that these products are hearing aids. They look at them and think they’re more likely to be like an earbud or some type of consumer electronic piece. And I think that really helps everybody. You know, back to that, trying to expand the market—one way to try to expand the market is to bring things into the market that don’t look like hearing aids.

LS:

Definitely. Yeah, the last few years, huge for hearables and for lots of audio products, like the whole Alexa Echo ecosystem of using audio. I mean, even before that with Siri, but you know, all this new stuff that’s like a focus on audio across the board definitely brings more people into this. And also, you know, the early days of Bluetooth, when it was like that person talking to themselves, or are they on the phone? Like no one thinks that anymore? It’s very clear. [Laughs]

BT:

Yeah, exactly. And I think that anything that we can do, you know—I think stigma gets in the way of the decision-making process for the consumer, the person with hearing loss, and if we can somehow eliminate that barrier, everybody wins.

LS:

Yeah. And I think another element that I saw in clinical practice and also just socially, is this feeling that people don’t want other people to know that they have difficulty hearing or hearing loss. And the reason is because they don’t want to seem like they are incapable. But that in itself, like just that connection is inherently, really, really ableist and wrong, that there’s any connection between your hearing levels and your intelligence.

BT:

That’s a really good point, I think that really speaks to the fact that of the profession working with industry to try to overcome a barrier, because we can bring a product to market that looks small, it doesn’t look like a hearing aid, but then at the end of the day, when a clinician is with a patient, your counseling skills are really important to overcome that barrier.

LS:

Yeah, and to remind people that people are going to know your way that something is up. Either they think you’re aloof or that you’re ignoring them, or that you missed the joke, or that you don’t listen in meetings like it’s gonna come out one way or another. So maybe the conversation is, What’s that in your ear? 

And then another element in the stigma conversation, I think is also about various religious communities, insular communities, but also across the board. And I remember having patients when I worked in Brooklyn, you know, there was a very diverse patient population in the clinic where I worked. So we had Jews and a lot of Jews said ‘oh I don’t know it’s not good for the family and the reputation.’ Then we had Muslim patients and they would say the exact same thing. And then we had Hindu patients and they would say the exact same thing [Laughs]. So there is something about close-knit insular family kind of communities that also might have an element of stigma around these kinds of things.

BT:

Yeah, no, that’s interesting, yeah. So kind of no matter where you go around the world there’s always going to be communities that struggle with this issue.

LS:

So do you find that there’s any specific way that you recommend for clinicians or again, for our listeners whether you are the family member trying to convince someone to go ahead and get it, how can we start to fight the stigma besides for making cool device?

BT:

Well, I think that’s where you know a lot of empathy, talking to somebody, trying to put yourself in their shoes, but at the same time, encouraging them to at least see a professional, I think goes a long way. Communication skills are really important both in the clinic, but also with your friends and family. Not just hammering somebody over the head and saying you have to do this, but maybe saying have you thought about all the good things that could happen if you took the next step on this journey, you know that’s really an important component to this.

LS:

That’s really good. And you know I think they need to apply that to my parenting too. Not go to do what I said, but if you do what I said, what are the benefits of doing that? [Laughs]

BT:

I wish yeah, well I have three kids and my kids are probably a little older than you, they are teenagers/young adults and it’s easier said than done some time. [Laughs]

LS:

Yeah, and I think that’s important also for us to see that some of the conversations we have within audiology—you’re talking to other people, many of them are parents and we’re professionals coming from a professional perspective, but there is really so much room for seeing each other as partners in a decision and you know part of your health care plan, and moving on totally away from like authoritarian, I’m the boss model.

BT:

Well, it is interesting that you brought that up. I just wrote a textbook called “Relationships Centered Communication,” which is going to be released later this year and the whole idea is audiology has kind of grown up in the medical model—describe the problem, we talk too much about the audiogram in my opinion, and how do we transition away from talking about the audiogram and how do we transition into talking about the person and what’s important to them. Anyway, so I feel like I know a little bit about that. I wrote about six chapters on it for a book.

LS:

That is fabulous. So, thank you for mentioning that. That is wonderful. That’s definitely something we talk about here on the podcast all the time. And for parents who come into this, which are a big part of our listenership, parents of deaf or hard of hearing children who have come into this world and then a whiplash with so much information—technical, medical information, reports, and it’s like okay, “But how do I help my child and what do we do?” Those decisions are much broader. So, that’s a big conversation we have here. And, what you said about the audiogram, I sometimes think about it like this. If you go to a cardiologist and then the cardiologist would unfurl this law and print out your EKG and then start explaining what does this axis mean and what do these lines mean, like what? I don’t need to know how to read this EKG. That’s why you went to school for eight years, not me. [Laughing] Just tell me like what medicine do I need or what is going on with my heart—I don’t need to know the details.

BT: 

Right. Sometimes I think we fall into the trap and maybe because it’s easy and that’s our comfort zone as clinicians is we want to talk about the the X’s and o’s. And you know, the average patient doesn’t want to go into the weeds on that — I think that’s just something that all of us have are kind of challenged by and have to think of a better way. I know that there’s been no inroads made in this area. For example, The Ida Institute now has things on their website to help talk better, how to have a better conversation about test results—I don’t know if you seen that but it’s pretty interesting you know it’s And to get away from these long, technical explanations of test.

LS:

Yes, yes. I’m a big fan of the Ida Institute and all of their [inaudible]. I’m going to take a look at that. You know, at the same time, I do wanna just put in there that it is important to understand your child’s audiogram but maybe it’s not the first thing you need to know.

Okay, so we talked about your textbook, and your ideas in this whole concept of relational communication, and I’d love to hear what advice you have for our listeners when they’re going through this themselves or for their family members?

BT:

I think that probably some of the best advice I could give is that you want to feel comfortable with the professional that you’re working with. So, make sure that you’re able to—that they’ve given you adequate time, just Like with any other medical professional that you’re gonna encounter. I think you want to you don’t want to ever feel rushed and want to feel like you can now questions. You know, pretty early in the appointment, you want to feel like the trust and rapport building. You want to feel like you’re not being pressured to buy something. I think that It’s one of the real challenges in our profession is that the way we define success is that we’re converting people that don’t wear hearing aids into hearing aid wearers, and there’s a there’s an accuracy enter a transaction process involves than that, which is all well and good but I think that we have to really be careful that we don’t try to push somebody into doing something that they I don’t want to do and I think that happens a lot with many chronic conditions, not just hearing loss. So I think you want to make sure if you’re a consumer, you want to make sure you’re working with somebody that isn’t going to pressure you into doing something that you don’t want to, but at the same time, I think you want to work with someone who’s going to kind of maybe challenge you a little bit because one of the issues around hearing loss, I think, is that people sometimes wait upwards of 10 years to get help, or during that 10 year period of time they acquire a lot of maladaptive behavior and it takes a while to will unravel those behaviors, and you want to work with a professional that’s gonna kind of—I use the word challenge, maybe it’s not the best word—but you want to work with somebody that’s going to help you overcome those behaviors. Challenge you a little bit to rethink your condition and acquire some better, more productive kinds of communication behaviors. And of course the device is a big part of that—knowledge and skills to use it effectively.

LS:

So what are some of those maladaptive behaviors that people develop?

BT:

Well I think that avoiding places because they don’t want to be there, because they can’t hear, they’re embarrassed, because maybe they’re afraid they’re going to miss out on something, relying on somebody else to kind of be your communicator—you see that a lot with couples that have been together a long time, and maybe the husband doesn’t hear very well. The wife is there. She’s sort of like his spokesperson who’s almost like an interpreter.

LS:

Have you met my grandparents? [Laughs]

BT:

[Laughs] Yeah, I have relatives like that too. So I think that’s part of it. First, you have to make them aware of those behaviors and that can be an uncomfortable conversation. And then it’s like, “Let’s put together a plan on how you can recognize that behavior and let’s replace that behavior with something that maybe a little bit more are proactive, better behavior that’ll help you communicate more effectively. And that’s not an easy thing to do but that’s really the challenge of a clinician these days is to not only find the right technology to help somebody but also then to put together a plan that I think addresses some of these negative kinds of behaviors we’ve been talking about.

LS:

Yeah, and the part that I always find so fascinating is that there are times when the patient won’t really notice necessarily a big gain from their perspective, and they’ll be like, “Yeah, I’m wearing hearing aids. I don’t have to turn the TV on so high,” but the other people in their life notice the difference. They don’t have to speak up as much and repeat themselves, you know. Their burden maybe has been lifted and the patient themselves doesn’t notice it.

BT:

Well, I think that really should be as to why it’s important when somebody comes into the office for some help from their clinician they have either a spouse, a companion and somebody they’ve spent a lot of time as part of that journey because they can kind of reflect on how the treatment, the use of hearing aids is not only helping the person wearing them, but also the individual that spends a lot of time with them. I’m a big believer that the companion or the communication partner needs to be involved in the entire process—goal setting, outcomes measures, you know. There are a lot of tools out there. One professors, Barbara Weinstein, is one of the creators of the tool—I think called the Hearing Handicap Inventory that measures auditory wellness, and there’s a patient version and there’s a companion version, and you can do it pre-treatment and post-treatment to see how much of an impact the use of hearing aids, for example, has on somebody’s auditory wellness. Not only the individual, but also on the companion and I think that’s a really important component to what we do in the clinic.

LS:

Yes, Dr. Weinstein. The HHIE. It’s huge and yeah, what’s so important about it is then it talks about what is the actual impact in your life, what situations are you struggling to communicate or to hear. Yeah, that’s totally where a lot of my foundation for learning all this, and really seeing the patient centered focus. [Laughs]

BT:

Yeah. No, I’m a big proponent—I like that term auditory wellness. I think that that’s something you’re going to hear more about in our field over the next decade, how important it is to capture somebody’s auditory wellness, pre- and post-treatment.

LS:

That’s a really good term. I haven’t heard that.

BT:

There’s been a couple of articles written over the last few months in journals like JAMA Otolaryngology, Ear and Hearing. For those professionals out there that read those journals, they have seen that and I think quality of life might be a better term or a term that’s just as useful.

LS:

Yeah. You know, and I appreciate that because for people whose primary way of communicating is auditory, it would be auditory wellness but that wouldn’t apply to everyone.

BT:

Yeah, quality of life is probably a broader term. That’s one that we use a lot in Signia when we talk about building hearing aids, and how we want to impact people. [We] want to improve their quality of life.

LS:

Well, thanks for bringing me up to date. I need to catch up on that. The latest thing. You mentioned bringing the communication partner, their adult child, or their spouse or whoever’s around, their aid, you know, if they have someone with them during the day and stuff. So my question is, how has COVID impacted this, you know, across the board that people really can only come one at a time or you know that, do you feel like the implications of that are moving forward?

BT:

Yeah, I think that we’re lucky we live in an age where we can Zoom like we are now or use whatever your HIPAA compliant virtual tool is. I think there’s a lot of great things that I guess it’s the—what’s the term that I’m thinking of here? You know, COVID is a horrible thing, but there’s a couple of maybe good things that will come out of it. And what I’m referring to is telehealth, remote care, the ability for a patient and their provider to kind of pick and choose. Do they want to conduct the visit in person or do they want to conduct the visit in the virtual world?

I think that there’s some real advantages to having an option. I think of all the patients out there when they’re initially fitted with their hearing aids that might have a couple of simple questions. They need a little bit more information about how to get the hearing aids in the ear, how to recharge the hearing aid, or maybe do they need an adjustment. Like, in the Signia world, we have an app, a telehealth app that they can use to do remote adjustments and I think that was kind of underutilized pre-COVID and now after COVID, a lot more people are comfortable using that and it’s a tremendous advantage for pay because I think of all the patients out there that I fit it over the years that they maybe gave up too soon because it was inconvenient to come into the office for numerous in person visits and then they just kind of gave up, but now with telehealth, using a remote care app, for example, they can quickly interact with their provider and then get the necessary information they need real quick and there we’re back on their way. The hearing aids are more likely to be in the ear because of it.

LS:

Yes. That’s something we used to talk about when I was in grad school. I graduated in 2017, so it’s like already a whole new generation of new things. Like, when I was in, the latest was the rechargeable batteries just starting out and now, you know, there’s always new fun things, like the intermediate streamers. That was also phased out.

BT:

[Laughs] Yeah, it’s pretty amazing how much technology is. With new every new platform, with every new chip, all the new things that happened. I mean, just a couple of years ago, to your point, there aren’t too many hearing aids are rechargeable. Now, for example in Signia world, we have an entire line of products that are all rechargeable. The runtime, the charge time is pretty impressive. You can get almost full, several days of use. You don’t have to charge—just on a few hours charge. It’s pretty impressive.

LS:

Several days now. Wow. That’s news to me.

BT:

Well, the days meaning you’re wearing the hearing aid—you’re not wearing [it] 24 hours a day. So, if you’re wearing it—

LS:

Sure, sure, but I think I remember it being like oh, if you charge it, you’ll get 12-14 hours.

BT:

It’s over at 24 now. I think 60. I think we have some products that are around 60 hours.

LS:

Oh, look at that.

BT:

Yeah, it’s pretty amazing.

LS:

I haven’t been in a hearing in clinic in quite a bit so, I love that. Thank you. And I think that’s true for our patients too, like, if there’s something that you know from two, three or four years ago, it’s probably changed since then. See. [Laughs]

BT:

Yeah, I mean, you look at all the ways that you can use an app to adjust your hearing aid or to connect with your provider, you look at wireless streaming to your iPhone or to your Android, you look at machine learning inside of a hearing aid to make adjustments in real time, or another application machine learning in the Signia world is a feature called Own Voice Processing—this always blows me away. I find this to be really interesting. You can train the hearing aid to recognize the wearer’s own voice, and when the hearing aid recognizes the voice after you’ve trained it, it knows to just turn that sound down. And that way, it’s more comfortable for the wearer. As you know, people that were hearing aids for the first time, they really struggle with the sound quality of their own voice. and there’s a lot of negative things that can happen if somebody struggles with their own voice. Well, here’s an algorithm that uses machine learning that takes care of that problem pretty much instantaneously.

LS:

That is very cool. Okay, I have a question about remote programming app. When you talk about that, you mean that there’s still an audiologist doing the changes, just doing it remotely. So it’s not the person who can kind of tinker that or both?

BT:

Well, it’s really both but I think primarily, the way you do it is with this remote app. The patient would connect in the virtual world with their provider, the provider would make the adjustments, really through the through the phone app to the hearing aid. So, it’s basically doing everything you do in the clinic, except for you’re using the phone and the app to connect. Signia is one of the only companies that has called Signia Assistant that uses another form of machine learning to enable the hearing aid where to make adjustments. So it takes the data of a thousand of other similar hearing aid wearers that maybe have similar audiograms, and wearing a similar product with similar features and settings. And, again, the provider has to give the patient control of this, so it’s not like the patient can do this on their own. The provider has some say in it but once the provider says, “Okay, you can use this app,” then they can make adjustments based on thousands of data points in the Cloud versus maybe—the advantages, you’re looking at thousands of data points versus maybe one data point, an important one. It’s the clinician, but the clinician has a bias and you know, maybe that clinician is having a bad day but—you know what I mean? That’s the beauty of artificial intelligence and machine learning is that it can you can pool all of this information and make smarter choices. So the Signia Assistant app, not for everybody, but for the right patient, this could be a great way to adjust your hearing.

LS:

Yeah. I remember you mentioned Dr. Weinstein. In one of our classes, one of the most important things we learned there was that even the idea of what it looks like to grow older and, you know her expertise in geriatrics—at what point does someone “old” and what do the older generation, maybe 70 plus, which is majority of our patients, right? What would you say about that? So, you know, we kind of did this exercise about—“Oh they’re, you know—” All the stereotypes that “old people.” And then it was like, actually, the data is they’re much more tech savvy and using lots of different devices, much more consumer educated, and very risk-averse to, making bad purchases and things like all the things that maybe you would have used to think about people in that middle age plus and older. Might say, you have to start looking at people in a different way. And that was, I think, an important lesson that stayed with me.

BT:

Yeah, and I think the point that you’re bringing to mind for me is that you can’t look at somebody’s chronological age and make assumptions these days. I’ve seen all kinds of 85, 90 plus year old folks that are very tech savvy, that are really cued into their gadgets, and don’t need all that much help. But at the same time, there might be somebody who’s far younger, who’s resistant to those kinds of things. So you really need to get it on a case by case basis.

LS:

Exactly, yeah. I’m thinking about my delightful 84 year old grandmother, who sends me WhatsApp messages and WhatsApp recordings and forwards all the things. [Laughs]

BT:

Yeah. No, you can’t make assumptions about somebody that’s because they’re older that they won’t use those things. I think if you expose them and they see all of the benefits from it, they’re likely to embrace it and also the other component is those gadgets are getting easier and easier to use. That helps us too.

LS:

Yes, I have another question for you about—you know, this is a little bit silly. So let’s follow—

BT:

I’m okay with silly.

LS:

We like to have fun here. [Laughs] Truthfully, there are people who will say, “You know what, this is too advanced. This is too much. Like, I don’t know about this whole artificial intelligence, machine learning. Is my hearing aids spying on me? Where are all these recordings going?” Like, you know, I’ve actually had patients ask about the fact that there’s a live microphone here. “is this going somewhere?” So I know, it’s kind of a funny thing to say, but, you know, it’s a question people have.

BT:

Yeah, I mean, I think that’s a legitimate question. I think that you have to reassure people that the data—that you’re anonymous, people don’t have access to anything besides very detailed things about the setting inside to hearing aid. So it’s anonymized data. There might be a few conspiracy theorists out there that won’t believe anything that you say around that, but I think just offering some reassurance. The other thing is if somebody doesn’t want that, then fine, turn all that stuff off. At the end of the day, the most important thing in a hearing aid in my opinion, and my opinion, I like to think, is based on a reasonable amount of science is we want to make sure that we optimize audibility, and comfort. You know, most modern hearing aids do that. What I like to say is at Signia we build the hearing aids, we tried to be as innovative as possible. We’ve talked about a lot of that innovation. We build the hearing aids, but the clinician has to fit them, and that means you have to make sure that they’re matching a target like the NAL and the DSL. For those non clinicians out there, I won’t go into the details of what that means but just know there’s about 30 or 40 years of science that says we know how loud a hearing aid should be based on your audiogram and a few other variables. And it’s up to the clinician to customize that to the individual.

LS:

Yes, and that is very important for people to also know that it might take more than one visit or one telehealth visit too. It’s a process of learning how to get it to fit you. Very, very unlike something like glasses where you know, you put them on and you see better. Hopefully. [Laughs]

BT:

Yeah, the ear is a bit more complicated I guess than the eye when it comes to that kind of stuff.

LS:

Oh that is very, very helpful in a lot of things that people can keep in mind. I’m so, so glad to have conversation. It’s like hitting all the topics that are that are very important to me and I hope more people can know, plus kind of recent several episodes of really focused on children. So I’m excited to talk more about adults.

BT:

Yeah, no, I don’t profess to be a pediatric audiologist. So I won’t even go down that path with you. [Laughs]

LS:

Yeah, that’s a whole other world so I just want to put that out there. If there’s anything we talked about that it’s like, are they talking about today—maybe not yet. [Laughs]

BT:

Yeah, no, no. I like to confine my conversations to the adults, middle aged and older adults primarily. [Laughs]

LS:

Yes. Alright, so my last question for you is going to be about the person who’s listening to us on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, or at allaboutaudiology.com, where they could also by the way, listen to the full transcript of today’s conversation. Now, they’re listening to this and they’re sayin, “Well, I’m listening to a podcast.” You know, I’m understanding this conversation, and maybe some advice for the person who says, “Do I really need audiologist? 

BT:

I think about the patient journey, we call the process of knowing that you need to take some action. For example, let’s say you’re 55, 60 years old, and your family or friends are saying, “You’re not hearing very well.” When somebody first starts telling you that, you’re probably going to say, “Well, I’m not even aware that the problem exists. I guess the point I’m trying to make is there’s a journey from being unaware of the problem to accepting that you need to do something about it. And that process, if you see a professional, they might be able to speed that process up and help you sooner rather than later. Why would it be important to get help sooner rather than later? For some of the things I mentioned early on in the podcast today, we know that even people that have sub clinical hearing loss, on the low end of normal, are more likely to have depressive symptoms, are more likely to have some dementia, or cognitive decline even when they have low normal hearing, compared to people that are on the upper range of normal at the same age. So that’s a really important reason to speed the journey. And I think that a professional can help you do that.

Another reason that professional involved is even in a world—we haven’t even gotten into this yet, but I think all of us know that over the counter hearing aids are going to become reality sometime in the near future. Even for people that might go the OTC route initially, I think there’s an opportunity and a need to have the professional involved in boosting their skills and their knowledge and getting more out of using their devices, even devices they may have bought somewhere else other than the provider.

So anyway, there’s all kinds of opportunities for the provider to be involved throughout the journey, even if they were to buy devices. Let’s say somebody comes into my office and buys a pair of Signia hearing aids. Down the road, they’re going to need expertise, some help for me to get the most out of those devices, adjustments on it, maybe there’s a new feature that needs to be turned on or need to be tweaked a little bit or I need to know more about, so there’s all kinds of opportunities for an expert who is understanding and good listener, who has a lot of empathy. Those skills, even as hearing aids, become more and more automatic. Those humanistic skills never go out of style.

LS:

Oh yes, that is a good way to put it. It won’t go out of style. Listening and empathy is so, so important.

Brian, is there anything you would like to tell our patients where they can find you if they want to learn more about you or about Signia.

BT:

I think you could probably Google Signia and find the webpage. There’s an abundance of information there about all different kinds of products. You know, one product that we didn’t talk about today, just want to make sure that I at least make mention of this because it’s such a cool product. It’s called Active and Active Pro. It’s really the first fully featured hearing aid that’s disguised as an earbud. And we talked about only 15 to 30% of people with disabling hearing loss wear hearing aids. Well, I believe that this Active product is a great way to expand the market because it’s a hearing aid. And we talked about stigma, well here’s a stigma-busting product, I think because it doesn’t look like a set of hearing aids. Anyway, you can find that on the Signia website.

My email brian.taylor@wsa.com, if anybody wants to reach out to me, I’m happy to field any emails that people might have. I want to make myself available to your listeners.

LS:

Thank you very much. It’s very appreciated. And thank you to the listeners of the All About Audiology podcast. As always, come and follow us on Instagram, on the Facebook page and join the upcoming HEAR Retreat for parents of deaf and hard of hearing children. All that information is at allaboutaudiology.com. Thank you so much.

The post All About The Stigma and Benefits of Hearing Aids – Episode 77 with Dr. Brian Taylor appeared first on All About Audiology.