Ear check your residents'

quality of life.

Impaired hearing, whether because of a simple build up of ear wax, or because there's a more serious issue, can, literally, dull your perception of life.

The older we get, the more likely we are to have a hearing issue, and the more serious its repercussions - because poor hearing accelerates cognitive decline by depriving the brain of the stimulation it needs to remain healthy. This is why poor hearing has long been recognised as one of the main contributors to the onset of alzheimers and dementia.

Most people over the age of 65 could benefit from ear care. Some form of hearing loss is almost inevitable at this stage of life, and, the older we get, the more our ear wax production increases – which means that a huge amount of relief and quality of life improvement is available from regular ear wax removal.

Hearology’s care home offering proposes to increase the residents’ enjoyment of life, firstly by carrying out a non-diagnostic, hearing assessment in the form of a game, and then by caring for the residents’ ears in a regular, planned and efficient way.

Our non-diagnostic, hearing assessment game, is called I heard that! Pardon? In this game we take the residents off your hands for a couple of hours, and ask them to spot different instruments in music clips, identify speeches, and name animal noises, to stimulate their brains and have fun, whilst our audiologists look out for signs of hearing loss.

At the end of the game, and with your prior consent, we ask permission for our audiologists to have a quick look in everyone’s ears, and provide you with a report on the state of your residents’ hearing.

Then, once again only with clear permission, we will return to carry out any ear wax removals or hearing assessments that seemed necessary when we did our quick check at the end of the I heard that! Pardon? game. And, if this first visit is successful, we will return at regular intervals to treat as many residents as possible in a single visit, thereby ensuring that their quality of life is maximised, and that the productivity of your staff isn’t unnecessarily impaired by residents whose cognition is being affected by a treatable hearing condition.