Information re the state of NHS Audiology departments

Today I had an appointment at my audiology department with regards to my hearing aids and it was a follow up appointment to see how I was getting on with them – I am not, they are awful. Oticon Spirit III really don’t work well with me, they just don’t. Too much black and white, no middle ground, which is where my ears operate best.

What I learnt has really angered me and shows this government to be nothing but a pack of liars and have actually made audiology departments worse since they came to power and we are still waiting to have a national standard of what to expect from audiology departments.

Before I go any further, I should say that this is not directed at the staff in the audiology departments, this is directed at the politicians who think they know better than those on the ground in the NHS, as well as those in the finance departments of the NHS who are happy to ensure those using NHS audiology departments don’t get a service they are deserved of.

In the past, audiology departments had to fit people with hearing aids and fitted them with aids that best suited the person, and if they didn’t have one that did the job, they would then be allowed to take the person private to ensure they got aids that were of use to them to allow them to live a decent life.

Now, the following occurs. The manufacturers produce a list of what aids they are offering and the NHS audiology departments are then told to pick one out of maybe 5 options, and they will get a batch of those, and those only. So the audiology department has to chose what they think will serve the majority of their patients. Now anyone who has ever worn a hearing aid will tell you, what is good for one, doesn’t mean it is good for others. I am a case in example, what suits me won’t suit my brother or other members of my family and they even have a very similar hearing loss to mine, as well as the peaks, etc on the charts, to make it look like they are the same.

So for the likes of me and maybe others in my position with profound hearing loss, the departments have maybe one option of a hearing aid to offer and if that doesn’t work, then tough, go private is the response. The audiology departments’ hands are tied by this stupid rule of the finance departments as well as the politics of this inane government which loves micro managing everything in this country, as they can’t bear to accept others might do a better job than them.

There should be a rule in this country that the politicians should have to use the same services as the rest of us and then would experience what we experience. And as you will see from postings following this, they really have no idea what the general populous want and desire for them to do. To say they are a bunch of self serving jackasses feathering their own nests, is polite, I dare like to say what I really think

Can anything be done, sadly not, unless we vote this current bunch out and replace them, and as much as I hate to say it, the NHS was in a better state under the last Tory government than it is now. Right now it is about to collapse and Labour are happy to sit there watching it die.