Hearing aid adjustment: Translating symptom descriptions into treatment and dealing with expectations

Conversation analytic research on clinical encounters shows that interactional conduct can be consequential for diagnosis, treatment and compliance. Problems reported for doctor-patient interaction can also be identified in Danish audiological encounters. There are, however, also specific aspects to the interaction during hearing aid fitting. This report of a Danish pilot study describes two such problems. The first problem arises from the requirement that the audiologist needs to ‘translate’ the patient’s subjective hearing description for making technological decisions. The second problem is the way in which the hearing aid user’s implicit and often unrealistic expectations are handled. This kind of research has potential application for developing a model of best practices.