Working with The IDA Institute

The Ida Institute is an independent, non-profit organization located in Denmark and funded by a grant from the Oticon Foundation.  It creates and shares innovative, actionable knowledge through professional collaboration to enable hearing care professionals to help hearing impaired persons address the psychological and social challenges of hearing loss.The institute is organized around the concept of collaborative learning that enhances and facilitates exchange among thought leaders, scholars, practitioners, educators and professional advocacy groups.Cubex has been an important part of the journey at the Ida Institute. Audiologists from Cubex were amongst the of the hearing care professionals to participate in the international seminars and ethnographic filming.As audiologists, we need to manage and negotiate change in our daily routines to navigate through ever shifting demands and requirements. Many audiologists have a desire to enhance patient care, but making an individual change in practice, such as implementing new tools, principles and methods (such as Ida tools) can be difficult. For example, changing habits can place you out of your comfort zone, or it may require you to acquire new knowledge.  And if you have been able to make changes, your next challenge may involve engaging colleagues and convincing supervisors in your clinical practice to see the benefits of the new approach.We are committed to assisting the IDA institute with generating and providing innovative, practical and actionable knowledge. The ethnographic footage from the Cubex clinic has enabled audiologists around the world to reflect on their own practice. It has facilitated much discussion about how to understand patient motivation and how best to address it within the clinical setting. In addition, it has provided valuable material for the development of the e-Learning Lab on our IDA Institute website. 

Before implementing new methods, principles and tools, the Audiology team at Cubex engage in peer support, observation and reflective practice. The purpose of this is to identify areas of professional development and challenges and to enrich clinical practice by learning to reflect by watching others in similar situations. This process has proven to be a powerful means to implement new methods in daily practice.The Ida Institutes most recent ethnographic field visit to Cubex in November 2011 captured the teams daily clinical practice and approach to managing change. This provided further footage which would be used for the Ida Institutes next international seminar series “Managing Change: Realities and Roadblocks.” The goal of the seminar was to develop strategies and practical tools to overcome existing barriers to change and establish a patient-centered approach as a foundation in daily practice.Timothy Cooke, Web Content Editor for IDA Institute talks more about the seminarA couple weeks ago, 25 hearing care professionals from around the world participated in the first installment of our “Managing Change: Realities and Roadblocks” seminar series.During the seminar, we applied our collaborative approach to understand the realities facing audiologists, explore the barriers to change and create ways to move ahead. The goal of the series is to develop strategies and practical tools to overcome existing barriers to change and establish a patient-centered approach as the core of hearing care practice around the world.Participants were very excited and enthusiastic about the seminar, which included lectures, role-play exercises, collaborative group work and networking opportunities.

“I was very impressed with the diversity of our group, yet the similarities when it comes to our work with hearing impaired patients,” remarked one participant.“This entire seminar has been an exploration of thinking outside of the box and of looking at the box from many different angles and perspectives,” stated another participant.“We needed to try and see each other’s perspectives because we were a [diverse] group of academics, program managers, audiologists in national health organizations and the private sector. This seminar gave us time to reflect on our differences and our similarities as well.”

As a group, we learned from the seminar that hearing care professionals, no matter the location, are dealing with change from myriad different perspectives. Many health care systems are working to increase the quality of care for an increasing number of patients, yet place additional restrictions on resources. Many professionals want to enhance patient care and implement patient-centered methods like the Ida tools, but find it difficult to change their behavior and convince supervisors and managers of the benefits of new approaches.At the conclusion of the seminar, the participants embarked on the creative exercise of developing new, tangible tools to help hearing care professionals manage and implement change. The results were extraordinary. We look very much forward to continuing collaboration with and among the seminar participants as we look ahead to our next seminar.