The answer is usually a lot longer than many people think! A hearing aid should never be seen or sold as a commodity item, it’s a healthcare product that will require the input of a professional ( audiologist) to programme and tune it and also to offer ongoing support.
Hearing aid care ( if aids purchased from a reputable outlet) should be continuous, normally free and should include advice and help firstly on getting used to the aids and then lifetime support.
Hearing aids at first can sound tinny or metallic ( this is the high frequency range coming back) and the wearer’s own voice can sound hollow or echoey. At our centres in Congleton, Glossop and Poynton we will give you a two week plan to gradually build up usage to assist the brain at ‘ normalising’ these sounds.
Fine tuning of the aids may also be required especially in the first few months of use. Hearing is very subjective. Two people may have very similar hearing losses but even with the same hearing aids could end up on different settings. Very unlike spectacles.
At our hearing centres we often add features to the aids over time. EG If a customer tells us after say 6 months of hearing aid use that they found hearing clearly in a noisy restaurant difficult we could add a ‘ restaurant setting’ to the aid. The customer would simply tap the hearing aid ( or use a phone app) to change to restaurant mode and the low frequency background sounds would drop and the hearing aid microphone would become more directional ( forward facing).
It may be that over time TV listening becomes trickier. We could then fit a box to the customer’s TV that upon activation would send the TV sound directly into the hearing aids.
These are a couple of examples of the many adaptations and improvements that can be made over time to a person’s hearing aids. The key element is ‘ over time’ . At the Congleton, Glossop and Poynton Hearing Centres aftercare is free and ongoing assessment and improvements to suit an individuals lifestyle are part and parcel of what we offer.
