Join us as we delve into the world of audiology with Doug Leonard. Explore patient stories and learn how cutting-edge features like the Find My Hearing Aid app assist in everyday life. Discover the importance of proper fitting and the innovative solutions available to overcome common obstacles.
This is Sound Advice. Audiologist Doug Leonard back in studio with us. Doug, we talk a lot about the great advantages of hearing aids. The technology has advanced so much. But the problem is hearing aids are really small and sometimes they're hard to keep track of. What do you do in the case of somebody losing a hearing aid?
Well, it can happen. And, you know, that's a double-edged sword, right? It's nice that they're tiny. It's nice that they're unnoticeable. But on the other hand, if you happen to misplace one, I wear contact lenses and I don't often drop them anymore. But I remember when I first was getting them and trying to get them in my eyes and it didn't work very well and they fell on the ground and I had to be a master of searching for those contacts. little clear devils on the floor. And hearing aids can be the same thing, you know, depending on the patient, of course, but we're sometimes dealing with clientele that might have some dexterity issues. Maybe they've got some numbness in their hands or some arthritis in their hands. Maybe they've got a tremor, maybe they've got vision issues. And so putting hearing aids in and taking them out, there can be some room for error there with patients. And if they would happen to lose them, one of the really cool technological features that we have now for a lot of hearing aids is a thing called Find My Hearing Aid. It depends on the manufacturer. But it's through an app on our smartphones. So we actually pair the patient's hearing aids to their smartphone. And then almost all the manufacturers now have some kind of a geolocation thing. It's tagging that location of where the hearing aids are on their phone through the app, through the manufacturer app. So if something got misplaced, we'd be able to find those hearing aids.
You also had a patient that had a daughter who, he wasn't about to have a smartphone, but she had one. And so she could help him find in case they ever lost one.
Yeah, because he had recently come in. He was a new patient to me and had hearing aids for a while and misplaced them. And they just weren't able to locate them. And she happens to live just right across the road from him which is handy but you know he was responsible for putting his own hearing aids in and taking care of them and a couple things we did for him number one got him rechargeable hearing aids so you know that that kind of reinforces every night hey these hearing aids need to go in the same spot versus you know battery-powered hearing aids sometimes people just take them out and set them down willy-nilly so the rechargeable is going to help him a little bit with that and then He does not have a smartphone. She does. And so we put the app on her phone, and she can locate his hearing aids. In case he lays them down in the house or goes somewhere, goes to an appointment, she'll be able to figure out where those hearing aids were.
And for some folks, I mean, it's just they don't fit tightly enough or they didn't get them in well enough. They can fall out.
They can. I mean, they can. And a well-fit hearing aid and a well-inserted hearing aid shouldn't. But again, there's some room for error there. Maybe the patient didn't get them completely put in. Maybe they were in a hurry. Maybe they had a tight-fitting shirt on, and when they took it off over their head, it flipped the hearing aid off of their ear. So there can be various reasons and strategies to try to prevent loss, but we certainly want to help them with anything we can do.
It's called Find My Hearing Aid, and it's a great app that you can have. Again, talk to the folks at Audiological Services of Iowa. Doug, you're here a couple times a week. And what's the phone number they have in case anybody's got any questions?
Yeah, I would love to visit with them, John.
It's 792-5933. Audiological Services of Iowa here in Carroll. They're here to help you.
