Aural Rehabilitation

As a patient of our clinic, your hearing is our primary concern. Effective communication skills are crucial to improving your quality of life. We are happy to offer an excellent program called 5 Keys to Communication Success. It is designed to help you overcome the frustrations associated with hearing loss, and has produced positive results for thousands of people.

5 Keys to Communication Success is an auditory rehabilitation program for people with hearing loss and their communication partners. It teaches comprehensive communication strategies using methods that are easy to understand and incorporate into your daily life.

You will learn the 5 Keys to Communication Success:

Weekly Lessons Delivered by Email

No usernames or passwords to remember. You will receive your lessons via email once per week for an entire year. The lessons are short, fun, and packed with important information. Each lesson contains links to additional training exercises and resources to help you get the most out of your hearing devices and overcome common challenges related to hearing loss.

Hearing aids are only one piece of the puzzle when it comes to treating hearing loss. We are proud to offer our patients a holistic treatment program that covers all pieces of the communication puzzle.

Call our office today to get started!

What Is Aural Rehabilitation?

Aural rehabilitation is the process of helping someone effectively adjust to and manage his or her hearing loss. Methods of rehabilitation are focused on helping overcome the challenges caused by hearing loss, therefore improving the quality of day-to-day life. Adult rehabilitation strategies differ significantly from those used for children.

Adult rehabilitation may be offered in individual or group settings and generally encompasses these main points:

• Adjusting to and learning about your specific type of hearing loss
• Improving communication skills
• How to use, care for, and make the most of your hearing aids
• Exploring accessories for your hearing aids

1) Adjusting to and Learning About Your Specific Type of Hearing Loss

All hearing impairments aren’t the same, which is why it’s important to find out what caused yours, what characterizes your type of loss, and how it affects your functional hearing and communication abilities. This will not only help relieve frustrations when retraining your brain, but it will also help you explain to your loved ones and friends what you go through.

2) Improving Communication Skills

Communicating involves more than just verbal skills; there are many pieces involved.

• Retraining Your Brain
  Your hearing aids allow you to hear sounds you may not have heard in a very long time. It takes time for your brain to get used to those sounds, and aural rehabilitation services offer you strategies to help with this.
• Actions Speak Louder Than Words
  You can also learn to use visual cues. The adage “actions speak louder than words” is very true; the ways in which people augment verbal communication with their facial expressions and gestures help provide clues as to what they are saying.
• Lipreading
  Lipreading helps you understand what sounds look like when people say them. This is more than just being able to read lips — it’s about being able to differentiate words that have similar mouth movements but different meanings.
• Finding Your Place
  Communication skills can be improved by learning what environmental settings are best for you to socialize or work in, and how to effectively manage them.

3) How to Use and Make the Most of Your Hearing Aids

Your hearing aid was chosen by you and your provider because it offers the best features for you and your lifestyle. Understanding exactly what your technology is designed to do (and not to do) will help you get the most out of it. Using hearing technology doesn’t mean everything is fixed, so having realistic expectations about what to expect with your devices will help you adjust more successfully to them.

4) Exploring Accessories for Your Hearing Aids

With technological advancements in hearing aids also come an array of possible accessories! Assistive listening devices that connect to your phone, TV, and music players are just some of the integrative options to accompany your technology. Plan to discuss augmented technologies with your hearing health care provider.

5) Support

There are two main kinds of support for those with hearing impairment. First, there are laws like the Americans with Disabilities Act, which offers accommodations for people with hearing loss in the workplace and other places you frequent (hospitals, churches, and courtrooms). Second, support groups provide significant help in meeting the daily challenges associated with living with hearing loss. While friends and family can be supportive, there’s nothing like talking to someone who knows exactly what you’re going through. Support groups can be found online or through your audiologist.

What your child’s habilitation looks like depends on:

• The severity of the impairment
• The child’s age at which the hearing loss occurred, was diagnosed, and was treated
• The type of hearing loss

The Different Parts of Child Aural Habilitation
“Auditory perception” is a clinical term that means helping your child:

• Identify sounds
• Tell the difference between sounds
• Attach meaning to sounds

Visual Cues

Communication skills can be improved by learning what environmental settings are best for you to socialize or work in, and how to effectively manage them.

Speech Improvement

Help them learn to pronounce and enunciate correctly, with more normal voice quality, rate of speech, loudness, and rhythm.

Hearing Aids

When kids first get their technology, it is maintained on a daily basis by caregivers or loved ones. As they grow older, it is important to help them get used to adjusting and maintaining the devices themselves at age-appropriate levels, eventually leading them to be the main point of contact with the audiologist.