A 2023 of challenges and successful conferences for the profession of audiology

The audiologist was ranked as low as 90th in a US list of 100 Best Jobs. In the health sphere, the hearing care professional didn’t exactly star either. Where did the audiologist come in a US News and World Report ranking of 29 health areas?

Start a four-part report on the hiring crisis facing UK audiology. Read what profession leaders, academics, and major institutions make of the problem, and what solutions exist?

The 67th International Congress of Hearing Aid Acousticians (EUHA), held in Nuremberg, Germany, from October 18 to 20, made 2023 a breakthrough year in person-to-person gatherings, the world’s biggest hearing event almost touching its target of 10k attendees.

Failings in paediatric audiology in the NHS Lothian service had repercussions that go well beyond Scotland, beyond paediatrics, and will spill into UK audiology policy and management in 2024 and the coming years. “There must be no more similar failures,” is one expert’s view, and that is one echoed across a shellshocked profession. Reactions in 2023 were widespread and excoriating.

Hearing businesses in France found alternative ways to combat their recruitment difficulties. Our editorial team in France reported on a dating game, just one strategy for bringing qualified people into the profession of audiology.

The nightmare/blessing of Covid for audiology. A wider educational curriculum for trainee hearing care professionals. The slowness of change in the risk-aversive NHS. And the still too-high price of OTC product. All this and more in the views of Professor Adrian Davis on The Way Forward for UK Audiology.

Plenty of sound advice for professionals in the articles of Raúl García-Medina, of which these, on mental health and audiology, and on compression factors in fittings, are just two from 2023.

Source: Audiology Worldnews and Audiology News UK articles 2023