11/29/2006

No morning clinic because supervisor had a meeting.

DPS

I helped with the listening check before clinic started, which was kind of neat. While we were performing the check, we noticed that the warble tones sounded a little weird when it was being presented through the left speaker. It did not sound like that in the right speaker. The observation was noted in the listening check log.

This client was a DPS man in for his annual evaluation. He indicated that he did have some noisy hobbies, such as hunting. He did state that he used hearing protection both on the job and while shooting. Otoscopy was normal. His thresholds were elevated, but there wasn't that much of a difference between his last audiogram and his current one. The clinician provided him with new ear plugs.

During my last observation session, I saw DPS client. He had missed his inital appointment and had re-scheduled this one. While his thresholds had changed for the worse since his last visit, that was not what made this session interesting. All of the equipment in the clinic malfunctioned. The video otoscope light source would not work, it only picked up the room lighting. The tympanogram also malfuctioned, the clinician had to manually perform the acoustic decay because the machine would not let her automatically switch to that selection. The client was very understanding and did not get irritated since it took longer than usual.