Practice Management And Professional Issues CEU Courses

In this course we will interview Jerry Northern, PhD, a pioneer in the field of pediatric audiology, and his daughter, Amy Hardie, MEd, a teacher of the deaf and hard of hearing. We will discuss the evolution of universal newborn hearing screening in the United States and the current state of early intervention for children with hearing loss.

How can reflective practices help hearing care providers become mindful of the gap between the intention clinicians have to make appointments person-centered, and the reality of implementing person-centered care in daily clinical practice? What are the benefits of setting aside time to reflect? In this session, we will introduce self-development tools for analysis and reflective practice, including ethnographic videos and the Reflective Journal, which will help clinicians to understand their patients’ needs and preferences, as well as their own professional development needs, to improve the outcomes of appointments.

The involvement of family and communication partners in healthcare is a well-established element of person centred care. This course will describe the important roles that communication partners play, explore the impact of hearing loss on family members, and identify practical tools that audiologists can use to involve them in the hearing care journey.

Getting teams onboard with change can be challenging. This course introduces clinical leads and managers to the Ida Change Guide, an enjoyable and easy-to-use process for involving their teams in the change journey and implementing person-centered care in their clinic.

Anecdotal evidence suggests that deaf and hard of hearing students benefit when involved in structured, supportive, peer-to-peer experiences. Two successful school-based peer support groups located in Alberta and Ohio have achieved these positive outcomes. Factors contributing to success were a leader-mentor model combined with student, audiologist and community mentors. Our aim with this work was to develop a template for a structured school-based support and resource program, that could guide school-based hearing care professionals on how to bring together students with hearing loss to share experiences, learn about education, advocacy, and living with hearing loss. A survey of North American school-based hearing professionals along with a review of the literature was completed. The aim was to explore structured peer programs, specific to students who are deaf or hard of hearing, and to understand the barriers and facilitators to developing and implementing these support programs.