Dr. Mohamed Ibrahim Shabana presented his experiences in a poster using the Ida Living Well tool at the 2nd International Conference on Adult Hearing Screening (AHS) at Lake Como, Italy last week.
Shabana is a professor of audiology at Cairo University, Egypt. He attended the Ida Institute’s Living Well with Hearing Loss seminar series in 2011 and was instrumental in developing the tool that resulted from the seminar.
The Living Well tool enables the audiologist to open a dialogue with the patient about the communication situations in daily life that are meaningful for them. The audiologist can then help identify communication strategies and technological solutions.
Shabana used the tool with 10 patients with moderate-to-severe hearing loss. The patients had been fitted with hearing aids three months prior to the consultation and were coming in for a follow-up appointment. His initial findings were that using the tool helped patients describe their hearing handicap inventory in a more positive, interactive way.
“These results are still ‘early’ and I plan to continue to keep data on the use of the tool in my practice,” said Shabana. “But my experiences thus far show that the tool is useful because it focuses on positive experiences yet still exposes issues where the audiologist can provide assistance.”
Shabana also finds that the Living Well tool can also be a valuable means for professional self-development. The tool can provide audiologists with useful insights into the different communication challenges that people with hearing loss experience in their daily lives.
“The positivity of the Living Well tool is not just about identifying specific communication situations,” states Shabana. “The key to the tool is helping one explore the various problems a patient might be dealing with. I can then use this information later on when conducting new fittings and working with new patients.”