By Jennifer Groth
One of the responsibilities of Global Audiology is testing of new products with consumers during development. We follow well-defined protocols that should allow us to quickly identify and pinpoint issues. When a complaint or issue surfaces, we don’t want to be in doubt about whether the source of error might lie in the clinicians not doing things the same way. Although this works well on the whole, sometimes you just have one of those days…..for example, you spend 20 minutes trying to get the real ear equipment to open through the fitting software, are ready to call in engineering support, and finally realize that you forgot to turn on the power switch. When your job is to look for problems, it can be easy to overlook simple explanations and solutions.
One simple fitting error that we catch ourselves making involves not letting the fitting software know the physical configuration of the hearing instrument we are fitting. All manufacturers who offer products that need to apply different gains to achieve the nominal gain depending on what bits and pieces you attach – like RIEs with the different receiver options or BTEs with thin versus standard tubes – make accommodations within the fitting software. But this can only be done if the data is put in to the fitting software. For ReSound hearing instruments, these physical options are handled by using the “Reconfigure” function in the Aventa 3 Pre-Fit screen. If you are connecting to devices for the first time, you may jump directly to the Fit screen, making it easy to forget about reconfiguring the devices if necessary. Does it really matter? The table below summarizes the effects of reconfiguring, and what kinds of problems might be caused if this step is forgotten.
