Search

Bringing ear care and hearing services to the hardest to reach: the potential of primary healthcare workers

Can workers from the local community plug the workforce gap in providing ear and hearing care? Bringing ear and hearing care services closer to the community remains a key component of reducing the burden of ear and hearing conditions across...

Promoting human rights of deaf communities in low-resource settings

Stigma and misconceptions about deafness are serious impediments for many deaf people to realise rights and potential in some of the most challenging situations globally. Around 430 million people are estimated to live with moderate or higher levels of hearing...

The outer ear in the visual arts

The ear is an exceptional organ, and quite rightly takes its place in the visual arts, as described by Albert Mudry, who takes us on a whistle-stop tour of the appearance of the ear and its depictions in art throughout...

The power of mentoring

What is a mentor, and what are the benefits for mentee and mentor? Emma Stapleton and Rohma Abrar, mentor and mentee respectively, explain. The term ‘mentor’ is derived from Homer’s Odyssey, in which the goddess Athena, disguised as Mentor, guides...

Reducing hierarchy for individuals and teams across ENT

Alexander Pope said that “to err is human”, but medical errors can have serious consequences. How can better communication minimise the risk of them occurring in the first place? Allowing all members of the surgical team to feel empowered to...

What does functional neuroimaging tell us about tinnitus?

One of the most common causes of tinnitus is noise exposure, be that either cumulative day-to-day exposure over a lifetime or experience of acute noise trauma such as a loud concert or shooting incident. Observational data indicate that up to...

Screening for hearing aid fittings – an approach for primary care

Introduction The communication difficulties related to hearing loss can lead to ‘depression, social withdrawal and problems with employment and access to information sources’ [1]. Furthermore, unmanaged hearing loss is associated with dementia, a poorer quality of life, depression, anxiety and...

Why and what should hearing care professionals know about cognitive impairment and dementia

Good reasons to care about cognitive impairment and dementia in audiology If asking people what they fear most when getting to old age, it is cognitive decline that is named most often. This comes with the expectation of limitations in...

Hearing in middle-age: hearing impairment, tinnitus and hearing aid use in UK adults

Hearing loss has a well-documented adverse impact on emotional, social and physical well-being. In this article, Dr Piers Dawes from the University of Manchester gives an insight into his team’s recent work analysing the very large UK Biobank data set,...

Three is not a crowd! Involving family members in audiology appointments

Family members currently have minimal involvement in the appointment. Image by Caitlin Grenness. Hearing loss in older adults not only affects the patients themselves, but also their family members. This article outlines the findings of recent research into how family...