Where are you placed this year?
I am doing a hybrid externship with Rocky Mountain Ear Center and Cochlear Americas. Three days of the week I am at RMEC, which is an ENT practice in Englewood, CO that sees patients for hearing test, hearing aid appointments, Baha and Osia appointments, vestibular testing, ABR, and cochlear implant appointments. The other two days I work for Cochlear in the patient/provider support division and assist with some of their ongoing research project.
Describe your "typical" day (or lack of "typical" day)
When I am seeing patients at RMEC I am either on the clinic/hearing aid side or the CI side and my days are usually pretty busy. When working on the clinic/hearing aid side, I see patient's half of the day for hearing evaluations, fittings, and checks, plus I regularly see patients for Baha and Osia appointments as well. Some days we have patients come in for vestibular testing. The second half of the day I perform audiometric testing on patients before they see the ENT. This part of the day is usually a bit hectic as we only have 15 minutes to do pure tone audiometry, sometimes including bone conduction and tympanometry.
What's something important that you've learned at your placement so far?
I think more than anything I've learned to be graceful to myself when I don't know things, but also to be bold enough to try everything anyway.