21 San Miguel Avenue, Suite C, Salinas, CA 93901, 831-759-8600

Old Fashioned Service with State of The Art Technology

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Getting Used to Hearing Instruments:

1. The way you adjust to your instruments is doing what works best for you.  Some people leave the office and wear their aids until they go to sleep.  Others get annoyed after a few hours and if that is the case then take them off, but tomorrow you need to wear them longer.

2. After the adjustment period, it is important that you increase your wearing time until you are using your instruments all day. Soon wearing them will become routine. Using your instruments regularly under varying conditions, will teach you how to fully exploit your hearing potential and enjoy optimum benefits from your instruments.

3. (If applicable to your model) Learn to Control the Volume: Don't set the volume control too high. This can result in distortion rather than in improved understanding. Don't try to understand soft voices over a great distance. Remember, people who hear well can't do that either. As you gain more "wearing experience", you can adjust the volume control when you need increased loudness.

4. Learn to observe yourself: Adapting to your hearing instrument. Ideally, your hearing instruments should become "part of your body", similar to glasses. To achieve this, make sure your ear mold or In-the-Ear instrument is a comfortable fit. Should you experience any discomfort or "pressure points" please call us right away. Make allowances for the effects of fatigue. Wearing hearing instruments and hearing a greater range of sounds may tire you at first. Take a break if you get tired or nervous. Be happy with a little progress each day.

Learn to be an effective listener. With your new hearing instrument(s) it is now easier to hear better and communicate effectively in both quiet and noisy situations. It is still necessary, however, for you to be an effective listener. Even people with good hearing often have to concentrate on what they want to hear and ignore or suppress the things they don't. Try to identify any sounds you don't recognize when you first start wearing your hearing instrument. Practice concentrating on the sounds and voices you want to hear, ignoring those that are less important. When there are a number of different sounds occurring around you, practice shifting your attention from one to the other.

Adjust your own voice. At first, you may not recognize the sound of your own voice. This is because you are now hearing yourself more correctly with the help of your hearing instruments. Furthermore, you now have the opportunity to adjust the volume of your voice and the way you pronounce words. It is good practice to read aloud to yourself in this phase of your training period.

5. Learning to hear again in difficult situations: Living with noise. The world is a noisy place. People with normal hearing are unable to suppress interfering noises by concentrating on the sounds they wish to hear. If, however, you have had hearing impairment for some time, you may have lost this ability. Your mission is to live with both unpleasant and pleasant sounds. Practice concentrating on what you want to hear. If you have multi-program instruments, practice choosing the best program for the situation.

6. Active Participation in Group Conversions: Even people who hear well can have problems understanding speech if several people are speaking at once. So it is understandable if you feel overwhelmed trying to hear in large groups. It will help if you move closer to the person you want to hear and watch his/her lips. Do not listen to the group but focus on a single speaker at a time. Experienced wearers of hearing instruments manage good results in this type of situation.

7. Listening to the radio or television: Electronically produced speech may be difficult to understand. By focusing on the general meaning the speaker is trying to convey, instead of trying to decipher each word, your ability to use your hearing instruments could help.  In some cases an additional assistive device might be very helpful.

8. Using the telephone with a hearing instrument: There are a number of options, which can be discussed with us to determine which procedure works best for you. California does have a phone plan which will get you a telephone at no cost to you.  We should have already sent in a form for you.

Please include us as often as necessary to help you work through the first most difficult months on your journey to better hearing. Call us anytime. That’s why we’re here!