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Research shows that it’s important to bring a person with a familiar voice with you to a hearing screening so you can be tested using your individual everyday hearing situations. At Concept by Iowa Hearing Aid Centers, we recommend you bring a friend or family member along with you when you have your hearing screened for the first time, and for your semi-annual re-tests. Why?

1. Your companion will be able to experience what it’s like to hear like you do.

After your evaluation, we will have your hearing loss mapped, we can give a demonstration of your hearing loss for your friend or family member, so they can experience what you may be struggling with on a daily basis.

2. Your friend or family member will help in the programming of your hearing aids.

We can use your friend or family member’s familiar voice in speech mapping software to make sure important voices are in the output range of the hearing aids. If they aren’t, we will make adjustments right then so we can achieve the most desired results before you step out of our clinic and try your hearing aids in a real-world setting. Continued adjustments may be needed once you’ve spent some time in your natural environment with your new aids – and that’s okay! Each person’s hearing is as unique as his or her fingerprint.

3. He or she can help identify what type of hearing loss you may have.

A female or a child’s voice can be especially helpful to identify a high-frequency hearing loss, because of the pitch of their voice. Many people have trouble hearing higher sounds; wives’ voices and grandchildren’s voices can sound indiscriminate to a person with high-frequency hearing loss. When a woman or child is speaking to a person with this type of loss, their words may sound jumbled, or like the person is mumbling or speaking underwater.

4. This person can help consume the information we’ll give you during your appointment.

Hearing loss can be complicated. If you are having your hearing evaluated for the first time, and you do exhibit a loss, your screening can take up to 90 minutes to complete. Once your level of loss is determined, your hearing health expert will communicate a treatment plan for you and make a recommendation for which hearing aid will fit your lifestyle and your loss. In some cases, you will even be fitted with your hearing aid in that same appointment. When that is the case, you will receive information on your specific device, as well as directions on how to insert your hearing aid into your ear, and how to care for it. That can be a lot to take in, and having a person next to you, receiving the same information, can be very helpful after you leave the clinic.