Paul Teie

Much of what we do with our customer is education.  Most of our patients have little or no knowledge of hearing, hearing loss or hearing aids – it is a black box.  Hearing aids are particularly mysterious. Our patients don’t know what they can and cannot do, may never have experienced them, and may not have even touched one.  It

I typically dislike euphemisms.  For an excellent primer on how euphemisms can subtly change the meaning and impact of language, look at the late, great George Carlin’s brilliant comedic essay on how “shell shock” eventually became “PTSD”.  His point is that euphemistic language can sometimes soften and “tame” difficult concepts.  Perhaps we would do well to not hide the pain

Once upon a time, a man had a home repair job to do and went to his local hardware store.  He said to the salesman at the hardware store, “I have a job to do at home and I need a tool for the job.”  The salesman said, “I have just the thing for you!”  He sold the man a

The audiometric test battery is getting a little long in the tooth and could use some rejuvenation.  For about the last 50 years the time-honored suite of tests has been in place virtually unchanged.  Why should it change?  After all, hearing is hearing.  The auditory mechanism hasn’t changed.  And hearing aid technology, well, we are still dealing with output, gain

by Paul U. Teie, MS There are two big bugaboos in the hearing industry these days.  Well, OK, there may be more – there are OTC hearing aids, audiology assistants, the pointless enmity between audiologists, hearing aid dispensers and ENTs, and I’m sure we could come up with others.  But the two that seem to be generating the most discussion

Editor’s Note: While our editorial team takes the week off for the holidays, we hope you enjoy the most viewed post this year at Innovations in Hearing. This post was originally published on August 2, 2018. Nancy Williams, a person with hearing loss who holds an MBA from Harvard Business School and is President and Founder of Auditory Insight, published an

Nancy Williams, a person with hearing loss who holds an MBA from Harvard Business School and is President and Founder of Auditory Insight, published an informative paper in MedCity News about the trend toward consumerization of health care. She shared excellent insights about this transformation in the wake of the OTC Hearing Aid Act of 2017 which instructs the FDA

by Barbara Weinstein, PhD A guiding principle of work with older adults is patient-centered care (PCC) where patient preferences guide the decision-making process. Three domains of behavior govern shared decision-making. Clinicians must elicit the feelings and belief systems of the persons with which we work. We must be transparent about the diagnosis and expected benefits and harms of interventions, and