Hearing aids: Managing expectations

The key to satisfaction with hearing aids is managing expectations.
"When a person gets glasses, they get corrective lenses," says Patrick Plyler an associate audiology professor at the University of Tennessee. "That means the lenses are meant to correct an issue. Hearing aids are aids. They are meant to help not solve hearing issues."
That's why a lot of people are unhappy when they first get their hearing aids. They expect hearing aids to give them back perfect hearing.

Everybody's different
What they don't know is that every hearing loss, and every person, is different. Some people have more tolerance for noise than others. Some have hearing issues that may require a different solution altogether. And sadly, for some, like those suffering from debilitating tinnitus, there may be no good solution.
For many, the decision to take action has been a long time coming and they've become used to living in a quiet world. Hearing aids increase the level of sound a person hears, but they also introduce other noise that a person who has had hearing loss for some time might not be used to.
This can lead to anxiety and anger.
"There are a lot of stimuli in the environment," says psychologist Sam Trychin. "They fly off the roof because it's a reflective response. We see a lot of the reactivity in people with hearing loss; it becomes habitual. It becomes automatic and it interferes with their social lives."
Dr. Trychin says people often blame their hearing aids when the devices aren't the problem. The problem, in fact, is with them.

Learn to pay attention
"People with hearing loss lose the skill of paying attention. So now you give them $6,000 hearing aids. Is that going to improve their lot very much? That's not what they need. What they need is to pay attention. People in the hearing business come across this problem all the time."
Another issue is fatigue.
"If you have hearing loss, you're going to be tired a lot. If you're tired a lot, you're not going to pay attention very well. And if you're not paying attention very well, it will be difficult to focus on what people are saying and you can run into all sorts of attention problems."

Patronizing partners
Often communications partners are insensitive to these issues and over-react, patronizing the person with hearing loss and telling them "to turn up your hearing aid" when that's not the issue.
In order to manage hearing loss, says Dr. Trychin, people need to know the causes of communications breakdowns -- which is where a hearing professional can help.
"There are 40 kinds of communications breakdowns betwee people with hearing loss and their communications partners and neither is aware of those causes. People need to know what to do to reduce communications problems, they need to anticipate difficulties in upcoming situations. We, in the field, need to help them with that."

Practise, practise, practise
Dr. Trychin, who himself suffers from hearing loss, says breaking down communications barriers takes a lot of practise. Communications partners -- including coworkers -- need to communicate differently, talk differently, change their own behavior, which is difficult.
"People have been talking how they talk for virtually their whole lives. When I got married, my wife was 40 years old. She's been low talking for 40 years. Because I have a hearing loss, now she has had to learn how to raise her voice. I have introduced a huge problem into her life."
He adds, changing behavior takes "practise, practise, practise."