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.

In the last three years, the Ida Institute has contributed to a substantial and positive paradigm shift away from the prescriptive way that audiologists have been taught to treat patients, benefiting thousands of hearing care professionals in private practices, public clinics and academic settings worldwide.