Hearing Aid Verification: How Audiologists Prove Your Hearing Aids Are Working

Hearing aids can be life-changing, but only if they’re actually delivering the sound your brain needs. We dig into a question many people never think to ask: how do you prove hearing aids are working properly after the fitting, not just “turned on” and sent out the door? We start where the best outcomes begin by getting specific about the moments that matter most, like hearing a spouse at lunch, surviving noisy restaurants, or understanding phone meetings without strain.

From there, we explain how we track real-world success with the right mix of tools. We talk about patient surveys that reveal patterns in comfort, clarity, and volume changes, plus why feedback from a spouse or family member can be just as revealing as the wearer’s own report. Hearing loss affects the whole household, so verification should reflect that.

Then we go deeper into the gold standard: Real Ear Measurement. We break down what happens during a real ear test, why that tiny tube in the ear canal gives such powerful data, and why this step is especially important for children with smaller ear canals. We also share how verification can change for adults dealing with cognitive decline, where “correct” targets still have to be balanced with comfort and tolerance. If you want clearer speech, better hearing aid performance, and a fitting you can trust, this is for you. Subscribe, share with someone considering hearing aids, and leave a review telling us: have you ever had real ear verification done?

To learn more about Total Hearing Care visit:
https://www.TotalHearingCare.com

Total Hearing Care
Multiple Locations Across the DFW Metroplex
(469) 809-4487

Transcript

Welcome And Why Hearing Matters

SPEAKER_00 0:00

Welcome to the Total Hearing Care Difference, where we help you experience life through better hearing. Hosted by the Experts of Total Hearing Care, a leading private audiology practice serving the DFW Metroplex, we're here to provide guidance on hearing loss, tinnitus, and the latest advancements in audiology. Transform your life through better hearing. Let's get started.

SPEAKER_01 0:27

Hearing aids can only transform someone's life if they're working the way they're supposed to. So, how do we actually verify that? Welcome back, everyone. I'm Sophia Yvette, co-host and producer, back in the studio with Dr. Joe Copley. Dr. Copley, it is lovely to be back on with you today. Now, we have something great to discuss today, and I, for one, am excited for us to get into this one. So let's jump right in. How do we know that the hearing aids are working properly?

Surveys And Family Feedback

SPEAKER_02 1:02

Yes, of course, that's very important. Um, if we fit you as something, we need to know that things are actually working. And the way I start with the patient is I find out exactly what they're wanting to hear. The idea is that we find at least three things that the patient would want to see improved. So maybe they want to hear their wife when they go out to lunch every week. Maybe they're having difficulty on the phone with uh phone meetings that they have at work. And so we just really try to find those few things and we always focus back. So once we fit the hearing aids and we send somebody off into their own world, and then we bring them back and just generally just ask, How are you doing in those situations that you've told me about? So that's just kind of one of the easiest informal ways. So as I go from um more informal to formal is what I'll do. Um, one of the things we also do is we give the person a survey and ask them different questions, leading questions. How did you do on the phone at this time? Did you have to turn them up when you were listening to the birds or the TV? Um, we also give a survey to the spouse or child or significant other that the person might have there and ask them how they're doing because we certainly want those to match up. Because hearing loss, as we've gone over in other podcasts, affects um everyone around you and within your household. So we want to make sure it's going well for both people. And so we can go over those and see how that works. The next step up in my mind are some more objective surveys. So there are some surveys in the industry that are going to ask certain questions, and you can build on that and see if those scores will go up.

SPEAKER_01 3:04

Great. Now, getting into things a little bit deeper here, can you explain what a real ear test is and why it is such an important part of verifying accuracy?

SPEAKER_02 3:17

So, real ear would be considered the gold standard for looking at verification that the hearing instrument is giving the patient enough sound that they need. What we do is we put a little, it's just a little flexible plastic tube into the ear canal, and then we put the hearing instrument over it so it'll sit right on there. And what happens is that tube is going to measure how much sound is in the ear canal. And what that does is it tells us is it giving enough sound or even too much sound at particular pitches where the patient has a hearing loss. Um, and that's very important, especially when we look at children. Children are smaller than adults, so they're going to have smaller ear canals. And so the amount of sound we make even an adult may be too much sound for a baby or a child. So it's very important that we use that real ear verification with children. But it's also helpful for adults. Um, we can measure that sound quality and make sure that those frequencies are appropriate for that patient. Now, when we have an adult, especially somebody with um maybe some cognitive decline or some dementia. Again, we've talked in other podcasts about brain changes and how the nervous system isn't working as well. Even if we give them the sound that they're supposed to have, it may still be a little too loud or sharp, and we'll have to turn it down manually. But the real year really gives us a good idea of where that patient is, where they should be, and allows us to kind of track how they're doing.

SPEAKER_01 5:09

Now, getting into specifics here, when it comes to children or adults, what should that frequency or how many hertz should it be at ideally?

SPEAKER_02 5:22

So, what we do is we'll look at the hearing test and different frequencies depending on um there is this lab in Australia, interestingly enough, and they can determine the base formulas of how much sound each basically it looks at children for different years because children's bodies will change as they get older, and thus their ear canals are going to change shape as well, as well as the average adult. So if you think about it, average adult, what does that mean? That could be a lot of things. But what they do is they figure out exactly kind of what the sound should look like for each of the frequencies for different types of hearing loss. And so then we put that information into the real ear, and that will give us that information to make sure we're not giving too much in the lower pitches, we're not giving too much in the higher, or if we need to give more. And then each of the manufacturers will look at that and they can integrate that base kind of formula that came from the lab in Australia and implement it into there. So when we're doing it, we're looking at kind of a combination of what that objective um um formula should be and integrate it into the manufacturer's formulas. So it's a little complicated, but um there's definitely some smarter people than I that work on that and figure out those numbers. But there are some specific numbers, you're correct. It does get specific.

SPEAKER_01 7:04

Well, Dr. Cobley, before we close out today, are there any final words of wisdom you'd like to supply our listeners with?

SPEAKER_02 7:14

I guess I would say as an audiologist, it certainly is important to be doing verification in some way. Like I said, with children, I think real ear verification is a must. For adults, we need to look at that person and see how they can respond to us, if they can respond to us, if they're having trouble in certain situations. There may be different tools that we can use. While real ear is definitely, like I said, the gold standard. There are some other things we can do through surveys and questioning that adults can give us good information for that maybe children can't. So there's in my mind, there's a lot more tools that we get to use with adults than children. But that doesn't mean the one we use for children is bad. It's it's actually a very, very helpful.

SPEAKER_01 8:03

Well, Dr. Copley, thank you for breaking that down so clearly for us all today. We appreciate your insights, and we will see everyone next time.

SPEAKER_02 8:13

Thank you very much, Sophia.

SPEAKER_00 8:16

Thank you for listening to the Total Hearing Care Difference. If you're in the DFW Metroplex and ready to take the next step toward better hearing, call 469 809 4487 to book an appointment or visit totalhearingcare dot com because when you hear better, you live better. See you next time.