Patient Centred Care

As audiologists, we need to manage and negotiate change in our daily routines to navigate through ever shifting demands and requirements.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..By making patient-centered care the core of hearing care practice, the Ida Institute aim to positively impact hearing impaired persons and hearing care professionals around the world.Cubex is committed to assisting the IDA institute with generating and providing innovative, practical and actionable knowledge. Ever since the creation of Ida Institute in 2008, Cubex has been an important part of their journey. Adam Shulberg was one of the first hearing care professionals to participate in the international seminars and ethnographic filming. 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.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(Source: The Ida Institute)Before implementing new methods, principles and tools, the Audiology team at Cubex; Miss. Orla Kealy, Mr. Leigh Martin, Mr. Adam Shulberg and Mrs. Jerusha Shulberg; 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 our clinic in November 2011 captured our daily clinical practice and explored our approach to managing change. This provided further footage which would be used for the Ida Institutes next international seminar series is “Managing Change: Realities and Roadblocks.” The goal of the seminar is to develop strategies and practical tools to overcome existing barriers to change and establish a patient-centered approach as a foundation in daily practice.Mr Leigh Martin, Clinical Audiologist and Audiology Service Coordinator at Cubex, recently represented Cubex at the first installment of “Managing Change: Realities and Roadblocks” seminar series.The team at Cubex would like to thank all our patients who participated in the ethnographic filming and observation. Your kind input and time is invaluable and has enriched our daily practice immensely and enabled audiologists from all around the world to reflect on and enrich their own 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.