Hello and happy (freezing) Autumn to all new and existing customers of Hobsonville Hearing! To think that I once lived in Queenstown and now find Autumn in Auckland cold.

March is Hearing Awareness Month, which aims to highlight the importance of hearing health and raise awareness for the over 880,000 New Zealanders who are deaf or hard of hearing. World Hearing Day is celebrated annually on March 3rd.

This is your reminder to encourage friends and whānau aged 50+ to have their hearing screened. To our patients who already have hearing aids, ensure you're wearing them all day, everyday to get the most out of your investment and keep your brain healthy!

In this newsletter, we bring you:

• March's Short and Sweet Spotlight Patient - Megan Neal
• Hobsonville Hearing's Waterford Presentation
• TV Captions
• Our YouTube Channel

Tell us about yourself (interest, work, anything interesting, etc.)

I love interacting with people socially and through work. I love to read, bake and spend time with family and friends and I am looking forward to some road trips when I retire.

Tell us about your hearing loss and when you first noticed it

It started approximately about 10 to 15 years ago through work and was a gradual loss. I put off doing anything about, until I realised it was affecting my ability to socialise.
 

Prior to getting a hearing aid, how did your hearing loss impact your life?

I currently work in the building and maintenance sector and when not visiting sites, I am in an office that is open plan. I found it hard to hear my fellow work mates who sit opposite me, and found myself having to get up and walk around to talk to them or keep asking them to repeat themselves.

At what point did you realise you needed to do something about your hearing?

At Christmas, while visiting my daughter in Australia,  I couldn’t hear the family clearly and had to ask them to repeat themselves during the family meal times. That’s when I decided upon returning home I would look into hearing aids as I didn’t want to miss out on family & friend gatherings. Not doing anything I felt would exclude me more from conversations.

Did you do any research about hearing solutions before coming to Hobsonville Hearing?

I checked out a couple of companies and decided on Hobsonville Hearing. I felt well looked after and nothing was too much trouble, I can’t believe how easy it was.

Tell us about your hearing aid journey and how it has impacted your day-to-day life
Getting hearing aids is the best thing I've done. I noticed straight away when Abby put them in, I could hear her open the box on the shelf and it surprised me as I hadn’t realised it had become normal for me not to hear those little things. When Abby removed them I noticed the loss of sound straight away. I don’t feel left out of conversations anymore, they are great! I really should have done it earlier. The instructions during the visits to Abby were easy to follow and I haven’t had any issues, I think being positive about them goes a long way.

Earlier this month, Hobsonville Hearing was invited to Waterford Retirement Village to present a talk to the residents. At the end of the presentation, we had a very open conversation with the audience, answering lots of important questions related to hearing loss, the cost of hearing aids, negative experiences, and more.

We saw a few familiar faces in the audience and met lots of new faces! It is always a pleasure and an honour to present to our local community and we would like to extend our thanks to Lisa at Waterford.

Do you still struggle to hear the TV, even when you're wearing your hearing aids?

According to an article by The Spinoff, 38% of kiwis use captions or subtitles on a regular basis. The benefits of using captions include:

• accessibility to the Deaf and hard of hearing
• improved understanding of the program
• flexible viewing in sound-sensitive environments, for example, when someone is
• sleeping or there is noise in the background
• accessibility for people who speak another language

There are of course disadvantages too:

• they can distract the viewer from the program
• they take up space on a screen, especially if there are multiple speakers
• captions aren't available on all programs

According to Hobsonville Hearing's own research, captions are available on most platforms, including TVNZ, Three Now, Netflix, Amazon Prime and Disney. Neon was an outlier until recently, where they have started to add subtitles to more and more shows.

A recent poll conducted via our social media pages found that 69% of respondents use TV captions.

If you struggle to hear your TV, we strongly recommend you have captions on for all programs to avoid missing out.

Hobsonville Hearing has a YouTube channel, where we share informative videos about hearing aid maintenance and tips on how to keep your ears healthy. We plan to post hearing aid technology reviews, where we breakdown the top features of newly-launched hearing aid models. You can subscribe to our channel by clicking the button below - keep your eyes peeled!

As always, we are here to help you with all of your ear-related needs:

• Visit our website at www.hobsonvillehearing.co.nz
• Email us on [email protected]
• Call us on 09-930-9880

Or visit our clinic during our opening hours: Monday - Friday, 8:30am - 5pm.

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