Monthly Review - One of My All-Time Favorite Courses

Ethics is a tricky subject to cover in a course. For starters, it's an important - but not very exciting - topic. No one wants to be judged or to hear a long list of "thou shalts" and "thou shalt nots". And, the debates about what is vs. what is not ethical can get heated. At the end of the day, aren't we all just trying to help our patients and make a living at the same time? Do good intentions ensure ethical behavior?

Audiology Practice and the Potential for Conflicts of Interest

That said, one of my favorite all-time courses on AudiologyOnline was a recent ethics course by Dr. Fred Bess. In this course, Dr. Bess gives us some background about how the discussion of ethics and conflicts of interest started in audiology, and discusses some very interesting articles from other disciplines. I've heard a lot of ethics courses in my day, and this one put it all into perspective for me. It's part of our Vanderbilt Audiology Journal Club and is available as a text course on our homepage (view it here) as well as a recorded course.

I wondered how Dr. Bess, a renowned pediatric audiologist, took an interest in ethics. I was lucky enough to visit with him at Vanderbilt to ask him that - you can view our discussion here.

20Q with Pamela Souza

In this month's 20Q with Gus Mueller, Dr. Pamela Souza discusses cognition, some interesting studies of working memory, and how this can impact speech understanding. She provides clinical tips regarding counseling for patients with poor cognition and discusses how we might use the findings from cognition testing in determining amplification strategies. You can find Dr. Souza's article in the 20Q collection at www.audiologyonline.com/20Q

New from Industry

Catch up with industry happenings by reading the latest News, Interviews and Ask the Expert features over on the right hand side.

As always, thanks for reading.

Best regards,

Carolyn Smaka, Au.D.
Editor-in-Chief, AudiologyOnline