IdaNews

The February 2012 issue of Seminars in Hearing focuses entirely on the work, principles and tools of the Ida Institute. The issue contains 10 articles written by Ida US Academic Panel members and others on the benefits of patient centered care practices in the field of audiology.

The World Health Organization’s Regional Office for Europe recently released an educational textbook describing how health professionals can use the Ida Motivation Tools (the Line, the Box, and the Circle) to better understand and empower patients to change their lifestyle and behavior.

The WHO textbook, titled “Engage in the Process of Change; Facts and Methods,” explains how the motivation tools can help support health professionals in a range of medical areas, such as surgery, cardiology and audiology. The textbook emphasizes that the tools are easy-to-use and flexible enough to adapt to the individual patient, making them an excellent resource for doctors and other health care professionals who want to support their patients through the process of change.

Ida Fellows Vinaya Manchaiah and Dafydd Stephens have proposed a new model to represent communication partners within the social context of a person with hearing loss. Their proposed model, “Communication World,” is based on the analogy of the solar system. They presented the model in a journal article in Audiological Medicine.

Manchaiah and Stephens were instrumental in developing Ida’s Communication Rings tool during our seminar series on Communication Partnerships. The seminar series explored the role hearing loss may have on an individual’s relationships and communication with friends, spouses and family members. The Communication Rings tool helps patients identify important people in their lives and consider how their hearing loss impacts their relationships with them.

Ida Institute staff and fellows will contribute to the upcoming AAA Conference in Boston by staffing an exhibit, holding a workshop on the Living Well tool and previewing the Ida Group AR Multi-Media Manual.

Throughout the conference, Ida will staff an exhibit where visitors can join our network, pick up hard-copies of our tools and purchase our two newest tools: Living Well and My World. Ida staff will be available to discuss the tools at the exhibit’s Tool Wall, where all Ida tools will be displayed. We will also be conducting demonstrations of the Living Well and My World tools throughout the day.

In the exhibit’s lounge area, visitors can relax and explore Ida’s online offerings, such as our E-Learning Lab, Forum and idea competition for hearing loss awareness. Our exhibit is n

We are revisiting the land down under this spring for five interactive workshops on the Living Well and My World tools. This will mark a great opportunity for the Ida Institute to introduce our two new tools to the Australian hearing care community.

Ida audiologist Karen Parfitt will present the Living Well and My World tools throughout locations in Western and South Australia. Four of the workshops will be dedicated to hearing care professionals at Australian Hearing. Australian Hearing is the official government provider of hearing services in Australia and one of the largest providers in the world. Through its research unit, the National Acoustic Laboratories, Australian Hearing has made significant contributions to understanding and treating hearing loss.

The Ida Tool Room is now an even more inviting space to explore our practical, easy-to-implement tools and methods. We have completely reorganized and redesigned the tool room to improve usability and functionality.

The tool room is the heart of the Ida website. It is where professionals from around the world can easily access Ida’s tools and methods. From the tool room, members of our online community can download electronic versions of the tools and watch instructional videos on how to implement the tools in their clinical practice.

In the new tool room, we have re-organized the tools into five thematic groups: Assessing Patient Motivation, Engaging Family and Friends, Self-Development in the Clinical Setting, Living Well and Pediatric Audiology. The tools are now grouped with sim

Ida Anthropologist Kirsten Lauritsen and Ida Fellow Dr. Joseph Montano (Chief of Audiology and Speech Language Pathology, Weill Cornell Medical Center) conducted a session on Motivational Engagement at the 2011 American Speech-Language-Hearing Association (ASHA) Convention in San Diego, California.

Ida’s new My World pediatric counseling tool can help give the child a voice and ensure that they are an active participant in the rehabilitation process.

On 5 December, we launched the My World tool at a workshop in Manchester, UK. Over 40 hearing care professionals (HCPs) attended the interactive, collaborative workshop.

The My World tool can help facilitate an understanding of hearing loss from the child’s point of view. It can help the HCP uncover information about the child’s communication challenges, reinforce positive patterns, and formulate a strategy for coping with challenges.

The Ida Institute launched our new Living Well with Hearing Loss counseling tool at this year’s British Academy of Audiology (BAA) Conference in Wales.

The Ida Motivation Tools, the Line, the Box, and the Circle, were met with great enthusiasm at our Motivational Engagement seminar series.