Aural Rehabilitation

Aural Rehabilitation focuses on helping you adjust to your hearing loss

What is Aural Rehabilitation?

Aural Rehabilitation is a service we provide that focuses on helping you adjust to your hearing loss, make the best use of your hearing aids, explore assistive devices that might help, better manage conversations, and take charge of your communication. Sessions can be individual, in small groups, or a combination of both.

Aural rehabilitation sessions are incredibly beneficial and can cover the following key areas to optimise your hearing outcomes:

  • Understanding your hearing loss

    It is important to understand your specific hearing loss. Sometimes it takes several discussions with your audiologist and with your family for things to “click.” By better understanding your hearing loss, you will gain new insights into why you think people are mumbling, why you “hear” but cannot “understand,” why you have difficulty with female voices, and any other questions you may have been asking yourself.

  • Your family’s understanding of your hearing loss

    Your family does not know how you hear. What they do know is that you do not hear well. They know they use lots of energy trying to communicate with you. Our audiologists can play a recording that simulates what hearing is like through your hearing loss to help them understand what you are experiencing.

  • Hearing aid function

    What will your hearing aid do and what will it not do? When you have realistic expectations, it is easier to adjust to your hearing aid. This can also include hearing aid troubleshooting, and a review of the information given to you at the time of the hearing aid fitting, as there is often a lot to take in when you first get started. For family members, this information can help them understand why and how your hearing aid was prescribed for you, and how different people can have quite different experiences with the same device.

  • Learning to listen again

    Even if you don’ t have hearing aids but have discovered that you have a hearing loss, aural rehabilitation services can give you strategies to improve listening and increase your communication effectiveness. If you do have new hearing aids or a cochlear implant, your world will be full of sounds you may have forgotten existed. You will be moving from what has become a quiet world back to the normally noisy world in which we all live.

  • Assistive listening devices

    With or without hearing aid use, there are many other devices that can increase your help, such as TV listening devices, personal FM systems to use in lectures, conference microphones, telephone amplifiers and safety alarms. You can become acquainted with these devices and see how they can improve your social, family, and work life during an Aural rehabilitation session.

  • Using visual cues and Speechreading

    Everyone uses their eyes to get clues about what people are saying, their mood, their interest in the topic of conversation, and so on. You probably are using your eyes even more to make up for what you cannot hear. Speechreading training provides formal instruction in how speech sounds are made, which sounds look alike on the lips, and which sounds can be read, and which cannot.

  • Better handling of conversation

    By learning to take charge of your communication assertively (not aggressively!), you can become a more effective communicator. There are many ways to be assertive. You can ask people to get your attention before speaking to you, suggest that they face you, and ask them not to shout. Another way to be assertive is to learn and use strategies for handling communication breakdowns. Know when to ask for a “rephrase” instead of a “repeat”, know how to apply a clarification strategy, and learn how to ask the right questions.

  • Home modifications

    Furniture placement or changes to lighting at home can all assist to better see your conversation partner’s face and increase those important visual cues for hearing. Considering soft furnishings or carpeting can help to avoid noise.

  • Strategies to cope with background noise

    Rather than avoiding going out for a meal, try and request a table in a quiet corner for example, away from the kitchen and clattering dishes. Seat yourself directly in front of your dining companion so that you can maximise your understanding of conversation.

  • Support groups

    You are not the only one with a hearing loss. Joining a support group will give you the opportunity to learn from others’ experiences. How do they handle travelling, meetings, appointments, going to the hospital, telephone conversations, hearing in theatres, difficult family members or work associates? Have they used assistive listening devices? What has worked? Support groups are excellent forums for problem solving and mutual support. They are also good for your sense of humour – an essential ingredient for coping with a hearing loss!

At True Hearing, we love to share the full value of our expertise. Talk to us about Aural Rehabilitation to enhance your hearing experience today. Call (03) 9889 4915

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Hearing tests check a person’s ability to hear the loudness and pitch of sounds. Some reasons why you may need a hearing test include ringing in your ears, others companing that you talk too loud or watch the TV on high volume, or simply you have trouble hearing conversations.

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