We conducted our inaugural Hearing Awareness Day in conjunction with our key strategic partners at the Grand
Mercure Roxy Hotel.
There were two speakers;

• Mr TAN Boon Hai, Principal Audiologist for The Hearing Specialist Group and
• Dr ENG Soh Ping, Clinical Director & ENT Consultant (ASCENT ENT Specialist Group).

Two back-to-back speaking platforms were made available: one reaching out to the General Practitioners Medical Professionals (GP) under the Physicians Engagement Program and the second, to the General Public.

In addition to the hearing awareness talks and live hearing solutions demonstrations, on-site hearing screening services via mobile audio booth were also provided. In total, we had a good attendance of over 100 GPs and participants.
Our special thanks to Cochlear Limited, Widex Singapore and Parkway East Hospital for their generosity and support in making this event a success.

• Hearing loss – Problems & Solutions – Dr Eng Soh Ping
• Solutions for Better Hearing – Mr Tan Boon Hai
  - Questions you have always wanted to ask about hearing aids
  - When hearing aids are no longer enough
• Question & Answer sessionWe were invited to deliver a public ENT & hearing talk under Marine Parade Community CCMS & Marine Parade WEC’s Health Talk Series.

  A good turnout comprising of families and senior citizens turned up and brought great enthusiasm & inquiring minds with them.

  Dr Eng chaired the first half of the session where he presented an overview of hearing loss, its problems & solutions in his professional, candid manner. Mr Tan followed with an coverage of the top five commonly asked questions about hearing aids as well as the availability of alternative solutions when hearing aids offer limited benefits. We had a lively and interesting Q&A session where the audience asked questions such as what to do should an insect fly into the ear to why an existing hearing aid user is still not able to hear well. Here are some of them:

  - Question: My mum purchased hearing aid years ago but she does not seem to hear well especially in noisy situations. Are there any new technologies that can improve her hearing.

  - Answer: Advanced digital hearing aids that equipped with noise reduction and adaptive directional microphone will improve speech intelligibility in noisy situation. Binaural hearing aids fitting will achieve better outcome than just one hearing aid.

  - Question: Can we use cotton buds to clean our ears?

  - Answer: It is not advisable to use cotton buds to clean the ear canal as the size of the cotton buds are often as big as the ear canal. Thus, instead of removing the ear wax from the ear, it s usage will most often resulted in pushing the wax further into the ear canal.

  - Question: What happens if an insect went into the ear? What should be the immediate solution?

  - Answer: One can apply olive oil into the ear canal to drown off the insect first. Thereafter, look for an ENT doctor to remove the insect and clean the ear.

  - Question: For those with hearing loss and tinnitus (ringing sound in the ear), if they are fitted with hearing aid that come with masking sound feature, will the masking sound affect a patient’s safety e.g. when travelling along the road?

  - Answer: Most of the advanced digital hearing aids that are equipped with masking noise do allow the Audiologist to program the aid with a few configurations to suit the hearing needs in different situations e.g. when patients are travelling along busy traffic road, the environment noise is already loud enough to mask off the tinnitus. Thus, the patient will just need normal amplification without having to turn on the masking sound. On the hand when patients are in quiet places, the aids can be switched to amplification mode coupled with masking noise or relaxing music to improve the masking effect.

Our sincere thanks to Dr Chin & Ms Lynn Tan from the organizing committee as well as their group of volunteers for their great support and sponsorship in making the event a successful one!