Rehabilitation approaches to promote successful unilateral and bilateral fittings and avoid inappropriate prescription

Successful hearing aid fitting occurs when the person fitted wears the aid/s on a regular basis and reports benefit when the aid/s is used. A significant number of people fitted with unilateral or bilateral hearing aids for the first time do not continue to use one or both aids in the long term. In this paper, factors consistently found in previous research to be associated with unsuccessful fitting are explored; in particular, the negative attitudes of some clients towards hearing aids, their lack of motivation for seeking help, inability to identify goals for rehabilitation, and problems with the management of the devices. It is argued here that success in hearing aid fitting involves the same dynamics as found with other assistive technologies (e.g., wheelchairs, walking frames), and is dependent on a match between the characteristics of a prospective user, the technology itself, and the environments of use (Scherer, 2002). It is recommended that for clients who identify concerns about hearing aids, or who are unsure about when they would use them, and/or are likely to have problems with aid management, only one aid be fitted in the first instance, if hearing aid fitting is to proceed at all. Rehabilitation approaches to promote successful fitting are discussed in light of results obtained from a survey of clients who experienced both successful and unsuccessful aid fitting.