A couple weeks ago, 25 hearing care professionals from around the world participated in the first installment of our “Managing Change: Realities and Roadblocks” seminar series.
During the seminar, we applied our collaborative approach to understand the realities facing audiologists, explore the barriers to change and create ways to move ahead. The goal of the series is to develop strategies and practical tools to overcome existing barriers to change and establish a patient-centered approach as the core of hearing care practice around the world.
Participants were very excited and enthusiastic about the seminar, which included lectures, role-play exercises, collaborative group work and networking opportunities.
“I was very impressed with the diversity of our group, yet the similarities when it comes to our work with hearing impaired patients,” remarked one participant.
“This entire seminar has been an exploration of thinking outside of the box and of looking at the box from many different angles and perspectives,” stated another participant. “We needed to try and see each other’s perspectives because we were a [diverse] group of academics, program managers, audiologists in national health organizations and the private sector. This seminar gave us time to reflect on our differences and our similarities as well.”
As a group, we learned from the seminar that hearing care professionals, no matter the location, are dealing with change from myriad different perspectives. Many health care systems are working to increase the quality of care for an increasing number of patients, yet place additional restrictions on resources. Many professionals want to enhance patient care and implement patient-centered methods like the Ida tools, but find it difficult to change their behavior and convince supervisors and managers of the benefits of new approaches.
At the conclusion of the seminar, the participants embarked on the creative exercise of developing new, tangible tools to help hearing care professionals manage and implement change. The results were extraordinary. We look very much forward to continuing collaboration with and among the seminar participants as we look ahead to our next seminar in February.