Making a difference in people’s lives by helping them hear the best they can is at the heart of Powell River’s newest health-care business.
Powell River Hearing, which opens this week on Joyce Avenue between Rexall Pharmacy and the Medical Clinic Associates, specializes in working with its clients to improve their hearing by offering personalized consultation, a wide choice of hearing aids to suit individual needs and budgets, and a number of other services including aural rehabilitative counselling and options for tinnitus management.
The local company, opened by long-time Powell River resident Shannon Miller, is independently owned and operated. Shannon has a 20-year career in public health, has worked in audiology assisting the audiologist with childrenand vulnerable adults' hearing for the past 10 years, and is a registered hearing instrument practitioner with the College of Speech and Hearing Health Professionals of BC.
“I am excited to be offering hearing services in my hometown,” she says. “Helping people hear better is very satisfying, so embarking on a new career in the field brings a lot of joy into my life.”
Powell River Hearing offers no-obligation hearing tests and free hearing aid demonstrations.
Shannon recognizes that hearing loss is not something that affects only adults as they age but also can happen to people of all ages including young adults and children.
She takes a rehabilitative approach for adults who are living with hearing loss and works with clients to determine the degree of hearing loss and help them understand what that means for their lives.
“It’s important to address hearing loss if it is preventing you from living well,” she says. “Untreated hearing loss is often associated with poorer quality of life due to activity limitations and participation restrictions.”
Untreated hearing loss can have a negative effect on relationships and can lead to social isolation.
“Better hearing not only improves communication for the person who wants to hear, but also for the person who wants to be heard,” says Shannon.
Hearing aids also help keep the brain fit by reducing listening effort and improving speech intelligibility, she adds.
Though people hear with their ears, they make sense of what they hear with their brains, she explains. As hearing starts to decline, understanding what people are saying can become more difficult and seem like everyone is mumbling. That can make listening mentally exhausting, she says. The brain is trying to decipher what someone is saying but it is not getting all of the right sounds for it to make sense. It can be particularly challenging in environments where there is lots of background noise.
There is a period of adjustment that people go through when they first start wearing hearing aids. Their brain must acclimatize to sounds that it has not been hearing for a while. During this period a new hearing aid user should be monitored closely by their hearing care provider to ensure the hearing aids are not rejected prematurely, cautions Shannon. The longer hearing loss is left untreated, the harder it is for the brain to acclimatize to ordinary sounds like the hum of a fan or the ticking of a clock.
“You’ll be surprised at the sounds you didn’t realize you were missing until you start hearing them again,” she adds.
She says hearing aid technology has advanced significantly over the years and can connect wirelessly to a landline, mobile phone and television, allowing the signal to stream directly through your hearing aid device for a better listening experience.
Powell River Hearing is located at 4794B Joyce Avenue. For more information about Powell River Hearing's services or to book a no-obligation hearing test, call 604.485.0036 or visit www.powellriverhearing.com. Powell River Hearing is open from 9 am to 4:30 pm Monday to Wednesday, by appointment only from Thursday to Saturday, and closed on Sunday.
