More Than Just Hearing Aids

Group Workshops

We are excited to be offering group workshops at our Essex and Amherstburg locations! There is a lot of information given to you at your hearing aid fitting appointment, which can make it a little overwhelming at times. A group workshop is an hour long session where our hearing health professionals go over details about your hearing loss, your new hearing aids and aural rehabilitation or retraining your brain to understand speech.

So what does a group workshop look like? The groups are small – usually between 3 and 4 participants, which allows us to support each person and answer any questions throughout. The hour is broken up into three sections:

1. Hearing Loss

2. Hearing Aids

3. Aural Rehabilitation

Hearing Loss

We give participants detailed information regarding how our ears work, what the participants’ hearing test results indicate, fun facts about hearing and our ears and more information about hearing loss overall. This portion of the workshop gives participants answers to the questions that they may have been pondering regarding their own hearing loss.

Hearing Aids

When people come in to pick up their hearing aids, the amount of information presented in that appointment can feel quite overwhelming. Participating in the group workshop allows hearing aid users to gain more knowledge on the care, use, features and functions of their hearing aids. Having only 3-4 participants allows us to go over information regarding each person’s hearing aids, in order to help them better understand their use.

Aural Rehabilitation

Hearing aids are only one piece of the puzzle. In order to maximize the benefit of new hearing aids, we have to work on retraining our brains to hear in difficult listening situations. Typically, we lose our hearing slowly over time and while hearing aids give us back the sounds we are missing, we still have to do therapy to retrain our brains how to process and understand these new sounds. In our group workshop, we provide a demonstration of one of the computer-based training programs that we offer. The program is called LACE and it stands for Listening and communication enhancement. We’ll go over what the program entails and how the program can benefit everyone – regardless of what type of hearing loss they may have.

Group workshops allow our patients to learn more about their hearing loss, hearing aids and different communication strategies, as well as meet other people who also have new hearing aids.