Launching a Course for the Future

Since 2007, the Ida Institute has worked to transform the ways in which hearing healthcare professionals acquire new learning and skills in patient-centered care.  Our tools empower hearing healthcare practitioners to successfully integrate patient-centered care into day-to-day practice. 

Through the Ida University Course, launched in 2010, we have also found an effective and powerful way to help universities incorporate a patient-centered learning experience into their curricula for future audiologists. Universities around the world use the Ida University Course to teach patient centered care to undergraduate, graduate and post-graduate audiology students.

We’re proud to launch a new and expanded University Course that builds on the success of our first university course with new content and a richer context of questions, reflections, dilemmas, case studies, role-plays and ethnographic videos. While we’ve improved on the original, the goal of our newly re-launched University Course remains the same:  To create a sustained and substantial influence on the way students and professionals think, act and feel about patient-centered care in hearing healthcare. “Much has happened at Ida Institute in the five years since we launched the first University Course,” says Ida Institute Managing Director Lise Lotte Bundesen. “New learnings and research on patient-centered care in audiology and an expanded Ida Toolbox have given us a wealth of materials to expand and improve on the original coursework. The newly re-launched course benefits from the collaborative efforts of the global Ida community and especially the work of Professor Deborah Von Hapsburg and a group of dedicated university professors and students.”

Collaborative by Design

The Ida University Course was first developed by Deborah Von Hapsburg, PhD, Associate Professor, Department of Audiology and Speech Pathology, University of Tennessee, while she was a Visiting Scholar in residence at Ida Institute.  To create the newest edition of the University Course, Deborah, together with the Ida Institute, called upon the experience and expertise of 18 university professors and graduate students in audiology from around the world. That collaborative spirit is central to the design of the course, just as it is to the lessons presented. Deborah and Ida Audiologist and Project Specialist Anne Mette Jeppesen worked with the team of contributing professors, students and clinicians to develop the course’s multi-faceted, dynamic content.

“We want a patient-centered awareness to influence or change the way clinicians approach clinical encounters,” says Deborah. “To accomplish this, a collaborative approach was required. By tapping into the knowledge, vision and insights of different individuals, with different points of view (clinicians, instructors, scientists, and students), we harnessed the emergent property of collaboration, which is more creative and powerful than the efforts of individuals working on their own.” Deborah is particularly excited about the influence the course will have on the next generation of audiologists. The new University Course invites students to be active participants in all aspects of the coursework.  “By accepting the invitation to participate, there is the potential for intellectual and emotional pay-off,” explains Deborah. “It will lead students to think differently about what it means to be a recipient of health care services.  It will empower them to not only meet the hearing healthcare needs of patients and families but also to inspire patients to take control of their own hearing.  Our hope is that this course will inspire future audiologists to join a community of life time learners.”

Enhanced Content, Unwavering Focus

The overarching goal of the Ida course on the Human Dynamics of Hearing Loss is to have a sustained and substantial influence on the way students and professionals think, act, and feel about person-centered care in the hearing healthcare field.  As in the earlier University Course, core coursework continues to focus on the principles of structuring a clinical appointment and the perspectives of both the audiologist and the patient. Updated content includes lessons on Ida tools that were developed after the first University Course launched, including the Time and Talk tool and Living Well. The re-launched course also benefits from new research that lends a well-rounded and evidence-supported perspective to the patient-centered content. 

“Some of my favorite lessons were - and still are: Mindful Listening, Patient Centered Practice, Communication Partners, and Motivational Interviewing,” says Michelle Arnold, Audiology Clinical Supervisor at University of South Florida, who has taught the course and gave feedback about Group AR. “I added in some exercises from the site that weren’t originally in the University Course, such as the Time and Talk haircut and washing powder activity.” (These activities are incorporated into the updated coursework.) The course content has broadened beyond the Ida tools. A new unit, Extending Patient-Centered Care to Families and Children, focuses on understanding hearing loss from the perspective of the family, with special focus on children’s and teens’ experience of hearing loss. The unit was written by Eileen Rall of the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia, Paul Peryman of Van Asch Deaf Education Center in New Zealand, and Carrie Spangler of the University of Akron. A new chapter on health literacy, written by Barbara Weinstein, Ph.D., and her graduate students at the City University of New York, teaches students to make appropriate, easily-understood materials available to their patients to enable them to make informed decisions about treatment.

Christopher Lind of Flinders University and Deborah Ferrari of University of Sao Paolo (where she recently launched a successful long distance learning course) were also among the contributors to the course development.

A Commitment to Students and the Future of Audiology

The University Course gives the students opportunities to practice counseling in a safe environment. Michelle Arnold especially values the use of ethnographic videos of audiologists in real-life scenarios working with a wide variety of patient needs.  “The videos let students see patients in their homes, outside of the clinic environment, coping with hearing loss in real situations,” she notes.  “This helps students develop more empathy towards patients. Some particularly powerful videos come to mind. Howard and Geoffrey is a student favorite. Not sure if that one was originally included in the course, but the exercises lend themselves to easy modification – one thing that as an educator, I like very much!” For Lise Lotte Bundesen, the University Course is at the forefront of Ida’s commitment to educators and students.  “It’s exciting to see the course grow as Ida has grown, and to see it reflect new areas and disciplines that broaden the scope of patient-centered care,” she says. “We hope the University Course will continue to be a valuable resource for educators to bring patient-centered hearing care to undergraduate, graduate, and post-graduate courses.” Explore the newly updated University Course here.