BHI Screens Physicians' Hearing at American Geriatrics Society

May 16, 2008 - For Better Hearing and Speech Month, BHI made a strong showing at the American Geriatric Society in Washington, DC. Our goal continues to be to reach out to teach physicians and nurses that, when caring for their patients, hearing screening should be an important part of a physician's best practice protocol. Hearing loss is a neglected aspect of healthcare, even with the geriatric population. In fact at this prestigious Society's annual meeting, not a single seminar dealt with hearing loss.

To heighten awareness of the importance of hearing loss screenings, over 2 days 125 physicians, nurses and medical educators were given threshold hearing screenings using BHI's new teaching audiogram form. The audiologists performing the screenings were Deborah Berndtson (Alexandria, VA), Gail Linn (Rockville, MD), Leslie Lesner (Alexandria, VA), and Lauren Michler (Arlington, VA). Representing BHI were Latisha Harrison and Sergei Kochkin.

Besides 300 earplugs, the more than 200 physician education packets given out consisted of the BHI booklet Your Guide to Better Hearing, 2 reprints of JAMA articles on the physician's role in hearing loss screening, and a pad of our Quick Hearing Checks for use in their practice. We used the earplugs as a teaching tool by asking them to attend a lecture or run their practice with the earplugs in their ears. The consequent 30 dB sound reduction clinically would amount to a "mild" hearing loss. Our message was that, even with this so-called "mild" loss, they would in fact find it quite difficult to function. Finally we demonstrated how in their practice they could use a hand-held hearing screener.