Hear Again Managing Director Steve Foster has been helping people deal with hearing loss for more than 20 years and he’s yet to meet anyone who say they want to wear hearing aids!
‘It’s just one of those things you hope you’ll never have to do; hearing aids are just for old people, right?” he says
But the overwhelming feedback he gets from clients when they do address their hearing issues, is that they wish they’d done it years earlier.
“People realise what they have been missing out on,” he says. “They tell us everything sounds so much clearer - they didn’t know they had so many birds in the garden, or that now they can hear the click of a light switch or the noise of the car indicators.”
He recalls fitting hearing aids for a woman in her own home – when he switched the devices on, her eyes welled up with tears. “She could hear her young granddaughter talking in the next room.”
Steve and his wife Samantha opened Hear Again in the Coast town centre more than six years ago. A recent shift into bigger premises within the revamped centre with extra clinic space and a purpose-built ear wax removal room means the team will be able to offer more appointments and services to Coasties.
Steve, who works alongside part-time clinician Alison Vautier, says it’s important people understand that hearing loss doesn’t always mean someone needs hearing aids – it can be a sign of another underlying health issue.
“There have been cases where a client’s hearing loss has turned out to be caused by a problem with their nose or sinuses. Once, someone came in with earache that was being caused by a bad tooth.”
Wax build up is also common – even in young children. “You take the wax out and suddenly they can hear again. It’s very rewarding because you get an instant result,” Steve says.
When people visit the clinic, the first step is usually a free hearing check. “We have a good look at their ears and do a quick hearing test to see if there is a problem at all.”
If an initial test shows hearing loss, people can book in for a comprehensive hearing assessment so the clinician can fully establish what the issue is. The team is also able to establish if the client is eligible for funding for hearing devices. Most New Zealand residents are eligible for a subsidy towards the cost of hearing aids and some people can get even more help through ACC or Veterans’ Affairs.
Steve says getting hearing aids is not as scary or as expensive as people might think. “You can now get really good quality hearing devices for under $500.”
Advanced technology means modern hearing aids are very sophisticated.
“There are hearing devices that connect directly to your cellphone so you can adjust them discretely and hear phone calls in both ears, or directly to the television so you can still hear the TV when you are in a different room,” he says. “You can get hearing aids that have been proven to work better than normal hearing in noisy environments.”
Samantha and Steve are both originally from Yorkshire in England. Steve trained as a Hearing Aid Audiologist in the UK. Samantha has a background in finance, accounting, website management and admin, so when the couple moved to the Coast and opened Hear Again, she could focus on those areas of the business while Steve concentrated on the clinical work. Hear Again also has a branch in Christchurch and Samantha operates the head office function for both clinics, working with the clinicians and customer services team.
The couple live in Gulf Harbour with their daughter Leah, 20, and son Alex, who is 18, and love being part of the Coast community.
As an independent clinic, Hear Again deals with a range of different hearing device manufacturers. That means the clinicians can select the hearing devices that are best suited to each individual client and their hearing needs.
People are given the opportunity to trial their new hearing aids for up to six weeks to ensure the device is the right option.
For many, improved hearing is life-changing, because they can begin to enjoy social situations again.
“Gradual loss of hearing often causes background noise to become an issue in cafes, restaurants and at family gatherings”, says Steve, “and people find it difficult to hear individual voices over the surrounding noise. After putting up with it for a few years, they often stop going to places or functions where they won’t be able to hear.”
“They know they won’t enjoy themselves and start making excuses to say home, isolating themselves.”
People with hearing loss most often cannot hear high pitched consonant sounds in speech and have to try to piece together what they think they have heard – they frequently miss out on nuances in conversations, the punchline of a joke or those funny moments when small children mispronounce words.
“The main cause of hearing loss is wear and tear on the hearing system,” Steve says. “People who work in a noisy environment, such as a farm or industrial business or even a hair salon where dryers are going all day, often damage their hearing far more quickly than those in quieter occupations.
We are now seeing 40 to 50-year-olds with hearing losses we would previously have expected to see in 70 to 80-year-olds.”
Those in the “MTV generation” are also suffering, he says. People who were teenagers in the ‘70s and ‘80s have not had a great deal of silence in their lives – they have always had music playing at home, in the car, or via a personal listening device, starting with the ubiquitous Walkman through to the sophisticated devices we have today.
It’s a situation that could get worse in the future. “Young people don’t go anywhere without their earphones in,” Steve says.
Hear Again also offers a large range of hearing protection, from simple ear plugs right through to sophisticated earplugs designed for hunters and shooters. Or people can pop in to the clinic to get custom ear plugs for swimming or something to block out the snorer they sleep with.
“Having a clinic inside a shopping centre has been invaluable for raising the profile of the business,” Samantha says. “Most people who come in have just walked past and seen us.”
