Hearing Aids and Safety, Part 1

It’s fascinating to me that we all have to take a vision test to drive a car – this makes complete sense – but we don’t have to have anything else checked like our hearing.

It would really shake up our senior community if a hearing screening was mandatory before getting our drivers licenses renewed.  Between you and me, looking at the people making and passing laws in our government and knowing that almost all of them are well into and past their fifties, this will never happen.

In my private practices the average age of my clients is between 70 to 75 years.  Almost all of them drive themselves to my offices.  Now, we know that only about 20% of people who need hearing aids have purchased and use them.  If you, like me, are doing the math, there are a lot of people on the roads who have a hearing loss!

Research has shown the importance of safety and our hearing.  We usually hear things long before we see them.  Well, I should say most people do, except maybe those with a hearing loss that haven’t gotten a hearing aid.  Just thinking of someone backing up a car and not hearing a passenger telling them to stop because of something they hear is one example of how important it is to have good hearing.

It is also startling to me the number of people who live alone with poor hearing.  This creates a huge safety issue from not hearing someone knocking on the door or the phone ringing to not hearing something like an alarm.  (continued)