History and Development of Interprofessional Education

While Interprofessional education (IPE) has existed as a powerful construct for many years, the advent of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (2010) in the United States (U.S.) has placed a new urgency on integration of an IPE model into the education of students in speech-language pathology and audiology. The American Speech- Language-Hearing Association (ASHA) has embraced the IPE concept, and the ASHA Ad Hoc Committee on Inter professional Education has strongly recommended that ASHA support IPE within its academic curriculum for Audiologists and speech-language pathologists. As a result, it is very likely that ASHA will require that academic programs in its purview to train students, both academically and experientially, in IPE concepts and practices.

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Over the Counter Hearing Aids

Audiology resides in an ever changing landscape; we see it on a daily basis. In regards to hearing aids and other amplification devices, we’ve seen changes in size, shape, and function. Today, along with the common ear-level, air conduction hearing aids, personal sound amplification devices (PSAPs) are gaining popularity. 

Many modern PSAPs may also be referred to as “wearable’s” to be consistent with the popular devices such as wearable fitness trackers, smart watches, etc. If the term “wearable” is not appealing, maybe the term “hearable” is. The term “hearable” modified from “wearable” has been coined to provide consumers a more accurate and specific image. There are many similarities between modern hearing aids and PSAPs that allow for easy comparison. Both hearing aids and PSAPs are programmable to change user settings appropriate for different listening environments. Both types of devices have wireless capabilities, such as Bluetooth, to allow for communication between multiple types of devices.

Patients' Experience of Motivational Interviewing for Hearing Aid Use: A Qualitative Study Embedded within a Pilot Randomised Controlled Trial

The aim was to explore patients’ accounts with regard to their experience of taking part in a pilot study evaluating the feasibility of conducting a #randomised controlled trial (RCT) on the effect of #motivational interviewing (MI) on hearing-aid use. This was a qualitative sub-study embedded in a pilot RCT in NHS in which participants who reported using their hearing aid(s) less than four hours per day were randomised to MI combined with audiology standard care (MISC) (n=20), and standard care alone (SC) (n=17). 

Five themes emerged in relation to the participants’ perspectives about the key components of the research programme which influenced their hearing aid use. The themes comprise: additional support, clinician effect, commitment to research, research process, and feeling better about self. The provision of hearing aids in the #NHS may benefit from adopting a more compassionate patient clinician relationship, additional patient education, and post-hearing-aid-fitting support. Finally, this study suggests that the general research participation effect seems to have influenced the levels of #hearing-aid use in both groups. Strategies to minimize the research participation effect need to be considered in the design of the future full-scale trials.

Temporal variation in African American English: The Distinctive Use of Vowel Duration

African American English (AAE) is a unique dialect of American English that differs systematically from the variety spoken by the White population. 

Acoustic-phonetic explorations of segmental structure of AAE including vowel and consonant productions are still rare and the current state and developmental direction of AAE in the United States relative to dialects of White American English (WAE) are largely undetermined. Particularly little is known about timing patterns in AAE such as segmental durations, speech rate and rhythm. Objective: The purpose of this study was to better understand temporal variation in AAE by analyzing vowel duration. 

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Subjective and Objective Estimate of Neural Fatigue in an Adult with Auditory Neuropathy Spectrum Disorder

Auditory neuropathy spectrum disorder (ANSD) is a retrocochlear disorder in which cochlear functioning is normal but the transmission in the auditory neural pathway is affected. The present study reports of neural fatigue seen in subjective and objective tests of adaption in a 19 year old adult with ANSD. He had bilateral mild sensorineural hearing loss with otoacoustic emissions present and absent auditory brainstem response. 

Immittance evaluation showed elevated acoustic reflexes at 500 Hz and 1000 Hz in both ipsilateral and contralateral stimulation. Reflex decay test was administered at 500 Hz and 1000 Hz which showed positive reflex decay with contralateral stimulation. Olsen and Noffsinger tone decay test and supra-threshold adaptation test showed positive tone decay at 500 Hz, 1000 Hz and 2000 Hz in both ears.