Careers in Audiology
When faced with visiting a local hospital to follow up on a vacancy, I suddenly realised I knew nothing about the type of job I was going to find out about. Audiology and its related careers offer a wide range of opportunities to young people considering health and medical type jobs. The following article by the British Society of Audiology outlines some of these.
In the UK, Audiology may be considered to be the study and assessment of hearing and balance and the treatment and prevention of disorders of these functions. It contains a diverse collection of scientific, technical, clinical and re-habilitational disciplines, which together represent the complex whole. This diversity is perhaps reflected in the fact that there is no one profession or role known simply as an audiologist in the UK. There are audiological scientists and physicians and audiology technicians, for example, as well as many other professions in the field, but no single profession may be considered to represent the whole field.
Hearing and hearing loss (deafness) are major considerations of Audiology. These simple terms, however, cover a surprising number of separate professional roles, amongst which, for example, are the measurement of hearing function and the diagnosis of hearing disorders both in adults and in children, the surgical and medial treatment of hearing disorders, the provision of hearing aids, the rehabilitation and counselling of those who have a hearing impairment, the special education of hearing-impaired children, the prevention of occupational hearing loss in the industrial setting - and so on. A common associate of hearing loss is tinnitus (noises in the ear or head). Sometimes tinnitus can be more of a problem than the hearing loss itself and may come under consideration any or by all of the above professional roles.
Hearing is an essential part of man's ability to communicate - and it is speech communication and the complex ideas that speech can represent that separate man from the other animals. A degradation of this ability to communicate may not just be caused by a disorder of the ear. For example, the more subtle processes that occur in the brain, which help us discriminate the meaning of speech, may be affected or distorted, resulting in a communication impairment.
At the other end of this chain is the production of speech. Now although the assessment and treatment of speech production disorders are not by convention regarded as part of audiology per se, it is part of the communication chain and thus closely allied to the topic. Professions and careers in this area are thus also included in this booklet. Indeed, it is difficult to decide where Audiology ends and other recognised groups begin.
The other major area of Audiology is that concerned with balance. This involves the measurement and assessment of the vestibular organ or labyrinth that is an integral part of the ear and the treatment of disorders of balance. Vestibular function is only one of three main inputs to the balance system, the others being vision and proprioception (feedback from the muscles, ligaments, etc. to the brain) - and thus problems of balance are generally more complex to unravel than those of hearing. In general, vestibular and balance function are less well understood than hearing at the present time and, although a vestibular disorder may be far more debilitating and handicapping, knowledge and facilities for its treatment and alleviation are sometimes less well defined.
People who work in the Audiology field come from a very wide range of disciplines and levels of educational achievement. Among the subjects studied at school, college or university that might be relevant are: physics, psychology, medicine, physiology, engineering, speech sciences, mathematics, electronics, biology, acoustics, laboratory sciences and physiological measurement, psycho-acoustics, biochemistry - and so on. Thus almost any subject in the sciences at almost any educational level might be suitable staring point to consider a career in some aspect of Audiology.
Of course, additional education and training may well be required to reach the appropriate level, but those who are investigating the possibility of a career in Audiology should not necessarily feel themselves limited in any way by the subjects they have studied previously. The qualifications and training involved in each of the professions in Audiology are described in the appropriate place in this booklet. Any queries regarding these requirements, or indeed further details of any aspect, should be addressed to the organisations listed under that profession.
Despite the economic stringency's of the present times, Audiology is a growing field and can provide a career with good prospects. It can provide a job that is both challenging and satisfying to those who wish to help people in need. Many have chosen a career in this are because they wish to apply what they have learnt in the classroom to a practical field where close contact with patients is the norm and where there is often a satisfying mix of clinical, technical, and scientific and rehabilitation practices.
Author: Alan M. Martin, PhD
More Information:
British Association of Audiological Scientists: www.baas.org.uk
British Society of Audiology: www.thebsa.org.uk/
Related Links:
