Quantifying and responding to patient needs and expectations.

Comprehensive audiometric testing serves as the cornerstone of adult hearing aid fittings for many clinicians. The data will serve to define the degree, configuration, and site of lesion of the hearing loss. The data will be used in prescriptive formula to preset the hearing aid and may be entered into probe microphone or hearing aid test box equipment to provide verification targets. Clinicians are comfortable obtaining audiometric data, have an accepted way of obtaining these data, and are comfortable discussing these data with patients and other professionals. The patient, however, is not a walking audiogram and may bring all sorts of interesting nuances to the process. Just as part of the clinician's comfort with using audiometric data comes from the standard process of obtaining and reporting these data, the clinician who chooses to go beyond the audiogram in terms of data collection with a patient must have a means for gathering and quantifying additional information. The following case describes a method of obtaining and quantifying the patient's listening and communication needs. The case illustrates the use of these measures in recommending appropriate communication and safety solutions.