Comprehensive Care For Deaf and Hard of Hearing Children

[Rachel Saint John MD]
First, I just want to thank the two of you for inviting me to be part of this. I love what you guys are doing on this podcast. I think you're very organic interviewers. And it's a lot of fun just kind of chatting with you guys. But it's also fun to talk about work. Sometimes it's fun to not talk about work. Yeah, I mean, I think it's not anything new. I think the entire reason, in my opinion, that I have the job that I do, and what I think is the most important about it, is making sure these kids have access to language. I think it's very easily forgotten. I think sometimes we focus on all the micro stuff. We check off boxes for things like speech therapy and hearing aids. But the big thing is looking at the entire person. And I realize that I am in a clinic situation where I am built to do that. These are things that take time. But one thing I always tell parents when we look at an audiogram, I say, "I never look at an audiogram and determine if somebody needs hearing aids. I always look at a child."

So if you have a mild hearing change, and you're a straight-A student, and socially you're doing great, and you're crushing everything, am I going to double the quality of your life by putting a pair of hearing aids on you? Versus you have the same audiogram, and you're borderline failing a couple classes, and you're really struggling, and you are really hating school, that's somebody who would benefit from hearing aids substantially more. So I think that's a conversation that I think is great to have with families. But it really does take looking at the child that's in front of you and not just that piece of them in context. Because at the end of the day, this is all about function.