Communication and Relationships
Last fall, one of my Audiology friends asked me, "What is the "deal" with all the social media sites such as Facebook and Twitter?" I thought for a bit and said to him, "Do you know how you always mean to keep up with your friends and how they are doing in general? How it would be nice to remember their birthdays? Don't you hate it when you forget thier girl/boyfriend's/spouse's/kid's names?" My friend said, "Sure! The trouble is that we all get too busy." I said, "Exactly, well sites such as Facebook help you to do just that. It is a simple way to communicate and share with your friends and maintain those relationships."
Become a Fan of AO on Facebook
AudiologyOnline wants to keep up with all of you, and let you keep up with us. We just setup a Fan page on Facebook, and if you could, please become a "Fan" of AudiologyOnline. Just click on www.facebook.com/pages/Audiology-Online-wwwaudiologyonlinecom/44269650964. We would appreciate it! Also, if you want to hear about some of the "inner workings" of the Editorial Staff, when logged into Facebook search for "AudiologyOnline Editors" and become a "friend". We will be updating our status from time to time and you never know what might come up.
Communication With Your Patients
Beyond the professional relationships in the virtual world, there are daily communication challenges that we focus on in the clinic each day. Any good audiologist not only knows the amount of dB loss that a patient has, they often keep up with the personal lives and needs of that patient as well. This is often key in providing great patient care as you need to find the right rehabilitative solution for each patient. This month we have papers from three Contributing Experts that relate to this topic:
Brian Taylor, Au.D., Discovery/Fulfillment: A Consultative Selling System for Audiologists Dr. Taylor describes a specific system for effectively communicating with patients, while trying to balance the time limitations in a busy clinical practice. Why is this important? Dr. Taylor writes, "Even the most technically proficient audiologist is doomed to fail if he has poor bedside manner ..."
Lisa Lucks Mendel, Ph.D., Subjective and Objective Measures of Hearing Aid Outcome Dr. Mendel reminds us why we need to look not just at the numbers, but what the patient is telling us for a successful hearing aid fitting.
Donald J. Schum, Ph.D., Motivating the Older Patient To Take Action This is the first paper of a six part series that Dr. Schum is presenting on the human side of the fitting process via AudiologyOnline. Understanding the mindset of your patients is key to effective communication and getting them to take action.
Gabrielle Saunders, Ph.D., The Performance Perceptual Test Dr. Saunders walks us through a tool that helps us rectify things when a patient's reported hearing difficulties do not align with his or her measured test results.
Facebook, KEMAR and Around The Web
One more thing. If you are networking with colleagues on Facebook, you may have become "Friends" with Kemar. Yes, even Kemar is now on Facebook. He updates his status regularly and will often provide interesting audiology and hearing loss related links from various news websites. Where does Kemar get his most "interesting" news? Well, one of my Associate Editors asked him via a wall posting, and he mentioned how he uses the AudiologyOnline, Around The Web feature! We were flattered and all thought that was pretty cool. So, if you want to keep up with how the rest of the world looks at our profession take a look at Volume 5, Number 2 of AudiologyOnline's Around The Web.
Thank You For Reading
Thanks as always for reading and I look forward to seeing you in various virtual places on the Internet! Also, please be sure to view the content links on the right to see more about what is going on here at AudiologyOnline.
Best regards,
Paul Dybala, Ph.D. - Audiologist
President & Editor-in-Chief, Audiology Online
