Graduate Audiology Education and Student Perspectives on Over-the-Counter Hearing Aid Devices

Abstract

Purpose: While hearing care professions recently submitted commentary about proposed regulatory guidelines for over-the-counter (OTC) hearing aids, educational considerations were not highlighted much. This article examines audiology education regarding OTC devices, specifically addressing how graduate curricula may incorporate the topic and examining graduate audiology students' perspectives on proposed OTC regulations. Graduate audiology curricula include a wide breadth of core classes and several specialized courses. The topic of OTC devices may fit well within graduate coursework focused on Professional Issues, Public Health, or Practice Management. This article presents the curricular option implemented at a mid-Atlantic university, including a brief course description, module overview for the OTC topic, and two related assignments. Graduate audiology training with a public health focus will generally address the core functions, assessment, policy, and assurance, which facilitates a topic such as OTC devices. This educational framework also optimized the examination of graduate students' views by qualitative analysis of assignment responses ( n = 21) from audiology students. Thematic analysis of data revealed four themes with respective subthemes and categories. Major themes are examined in a discussion highlighting the perspectives of audiology graduate students. Conclusions: Regular teaching course audits facilitate curricular changes and may incorporate professional topics that are new, controversial, and/or in the development phase to optimize audiology curricular transformation. Analyzing student perspectives on current topics, such as OTC devices, provided an avenue for immersing public health audiology concepts into graduate training with an overall goal to improve equity and inclusion in clinical practice. The topic of OTC devices was appropriate for educating future audiologists.