What Should I Expect During a Hearing Test?

The Pre-Assessment

When you arrive for your hearing exam, you will be greeted by the front office staff and asked to fill out a few forms (unless you filled them out at home, which can be printed out from here), including those that record your personal information, medical history, and insurance verification.

Your hearing care professional will likely begin by asking you a series of questions concerning your hearing. This would be things such as areas you struggle to hear in and any past medical issues involving your ears. They will then use a device called an otoscope to look in your ears, evaluating the health of your ear canal and eardrum, and ensuring your ear canal is not blocked with wax. When indicated, they may perform a pressure test called tympanometry to evaluate the status of your eardrum and middle ear.

The Evaluation

For the hearing test itself, you will sit inside a sound-treated room or booth to ensure an accurate test. Through headphones, you will hear a series of beeping tones, pushing a button indicating that you hear them. This is to find the softest sounds you can hear at each pitch. Afterwards, you will be asked to repeat lists of words. This is to evaluate the softest level you can still repeat speech and how well you are able to understand speech at a comfortable listening level. You may also be asked to repeat sentences when there is background noise present. This is to evaluate how you hear in difficult listening situations, such as a noisy restaurant.

The Results of Your Hearing Test

Finally, your hearing care professional will go over all of your results with you, taking the time to ensure you understand your level of hearing loss, what that means for you, and what to expect if this loss goes untreated. From this point, things tend to differ a bit from practice to practice. At Cook Hearing and Balance, we take all of the information given to us and make a recommendation on whether or not you would see benefits from being aided. From there, it is your decision to make the next steps happen. If you decide that this is the right decision for you, we will then work together with you to create a customized treatment plan.

If you, or someone you know, think you may be experiencing hearing loss schedule your free hearing screening and get back into the conversation!