Ida Fellow Maria Hoff recently used the Ida Institute’s GROUP tool to introduce the concept of group AR to students in her rehabilitation and counseling course at the University of Gothenburg, Sweden.
For students in the BSc audiology program, Maria Hoff’s course marks their introduction to rehabilitation and counseling methods. Many of the students have yet to conduct an externship in a clinic and are eager to see how the relationship between patients and clinicians takes shape in real-life.
To expose students to group AR, Maria dedicated an entire lecture of the counseling course to group aural rehabilitation. She utilized the GROUP tool to show them what a group AR session really looks like.
“The videos on the clinician, patient, and student perspective of group AR in the GROUP tool helped take the drama out of the concept. It showed the students that group AR is not necessarily a difficult thing that only some people can do. It can be part of routine practice,” stated Maria Hoff. “After watching the videos, the students began to realize the benefits of group AR to the patients. They started asking ‘why isn’t this done more?’ and ‘why don’t we see this when we do our clinical appointments?’”
By focusing an entire lecture on group aural rehabilitation, Maria aimed to convey the benefits of group counseling sessions to her students and motivate them to conduct their own sessions as future hearing care professionals.
“While they are still students, it would be very good that they try doing group AR at least once, or attend a session, just to get a taste,” stated Maria Hoff. “There are certain things that patients cannot get from a one-on-one counseling session. You can tell patients what to do, but I don’t think they can grasp it with just giving them information. If they hear something from someone with a hearing loss, who has felt the same way, it is much more possible to make a difference.”
During the lecture, the students were asked to create their own group AR program by using the resources in the GROUP tool. The students reviewed the online guide and discussed in small groups how to setup the sessions by using the online and to identify the overall goals of the program by using the tool’s Quick Start Guide.
Next year, when the students are required to take a second counseling course, Maria Hoff hopes to expand the student’s knowledge of group rehabilitation and dig deeper into the Ida Institute’s GROUP tool.
Maria Hoff is a Lecturer at the Audiology Program at the University of Gothenburg in Sweden. She completed an M.Sc. in Rehabilitative Audiology at Bristol University in 2009, writing her dissertation on the factors influencing tinnitus severity, such as audiometric data, anxiety, depression, age, and gender. Her areas of interest include assessment and treatment protocols for tinnitus and hyperacusis patients and the factors and mechanisms involved in the development of severe tinnitus. She attended the Ida Institute Seminar Series on Communication Partnerships in 2009.