SKODSBORG, DENMARK—Patient-centered care is a popular concept these days, and certainly sounds like a good idea for any area of health care, including hearing care.
However, the Ida Institute notes, during its various seminars and workshops and in conversations at professional meetings, audiologists have sometimes expressed skepticism about it. They wonder if patient-centered care is a fluffy, intangible, time-consuming add-on to their current practice.
That’s why the non-profit educational institute funded by the Oticon Foundation has announced that its next seminar series will be on “Patient-Centered Care: Fluff, Fact or Fiction?”
Ida Seminars for hearing care professionals focus on key issues related to the physical, anthropological, psychological, and social aspects of hearing loss. The three-day programs engage participants in interactive workshops, group discussion, individual reflection, theater sessions, and lectures by Ida faculty.
The upcoming series will consider questions such as: “What does being patient-centered mean to us and to our patients?” and “What underlying skills or practical tools do we need to anchor patient-centeredness in our daily practice?”
Lise Lotte Bundesen, the Ida Institute’s managing director, says, “Together, working with hearing care professionals from around the world, we aim to create a bridge between knowing about patient-centeredness and making it the core of hearing care practice.” The first seminar in the series is slated for January 21-23, 2013, in Skodsborg, outside of Copenhagen.
Seminar participants, who come from around the world, will be carefully selected and must commit to a pre-seminar assignment in which they will be asked to use Ida tools in their clinical practice for three months before the seminar.
Faculty members for the series will include Sue Ann Erdman, a consultant at Audiologic Rehabilitation Counseling and Consulting Services, in Jensen Beach, FL; Lesley Jones, PhD, senior lecturer in social science at the Hull York Medical School, University of York, UK; Dr. Sophia E. Kramer, associate professor/psychologist at the department of ENT/Audiology, Institute for Health and Care Research of the VU University Medical Center, Amsterdam; and Joseph Montano, EdD, associate professor of audiology and director of hearing and speech at Weill Cornell Medical College
For more information and to apply to participate in the seminar series, visit the Ida Institute online.
Patient centered care has to include active and full support for hearing loops in one’s community. Hearing loops have been likened to wheelchair ramps for hearing aid users. I liken them to Universal Wi-Fi for hearing aids. Or better yet: autobahns for the Porsche hearing aids we so carefully prescribe for our clients. What good is a Porsche unless once in a while you can let it “rip” at 145 miles per hour? My clients LOVE how their hearing aids perform in hearing loops and are thrilled to be able to hear (at times) better than the person sitting beside them.
In case any one in Oticon or other MFRs are listening: I would love to see a few developments in the telecoils; smaller omni directional telecoils, automatic gain adjustment in the telecoil, EMI noise reduction in telecoils, automatic” telecoil present here” voice prompts just to name a few. Thanks!