Programming Your New Hearing Aids

You have been to a hearing health professional and have had your hearing tested. It has been determined you have a hearing loss and hearing aids are the ideal treatment for your condition. You have gone over the options of the types of hearing aids, as well as earmolds (if one is needed) and have made a choice. The order was placed and now you are back in to see your hearing health professional to have your new hearing aids fit and programmed. But how are they programmed and what is used in order to program the hearing aid for me specifically?

How does my hearing provider know what settings I need?

This is a very good question to ask. When your new hearing aids are ordered by your hearing health professional they put down on the order form your hearing test results. This helps the manufacturer to select and put together the right type of hearing aid for your hearing loss. Some manufacturers pre-program your new hearing aid to these results, while other manufacturers leave the hearing aid with the general manufacturer’s settings.

Once the hearing aid is received by your hearing health professional they go over the overall condition of the hearing aid to ensure nothing was broken during shipping. The hearing health professional then hooks up the hearing aid to the computer and along with a program from the manufacturer programs your new hearing aid to your hearing loss based on the hearing test results you recently had. So now your hearing aid is pre-programmed to your hearing loss, but it is not fully programmed just yet.

How do I take care of my new devices?

Next you will come in for your fitting appointment. In this appointment you will have your hearing aid fit to your ear, general cleaning and maintenance will be gone over as well as how to properly put in and take out your hearing aid and proper storage when they are not in use. This is also when your hearing aid will be properly finally programmed. With the hearing aids in your ears but still hooked up to the computer adjustments can be made to the sounds that you hear (some hearing aids will have to be taken out of the ears, adjusted and then put back in; this can be tedious but proper programming is important).

You may need to schedule an appointment for at least a weeks’ time for any other adjustments to the programming that may need to be done. The programming of a hearing aid for each individual person has quite the learning curve, but is made so much easier today with technology.