A personal reflection… I’ve spent years working with Hearing Healthcare Practice in Harpenden. I’ve interviewed Robert Beiny and his team dozens of times, and if there is one message they’ve drummed into me, it’s this: Hearing care is a marathon of counselling, not a sprint of technology.
I thought I understood that. But it wasn’t until recently, when my 92-year-old mother embarked on her own hearing journey, that I truly saw the difference between “dispensing a device” and “providing care.”
A Tale of Two Experiences
My mother lives a very long way from Harpenden. When she finally agreed to address her hearing, a visit to HHP simply wasn’t possible. Instead, she visited a reputable High Street chain. The professional she saw was, I’m sure, perfectly competent. But the commercial reality of many large retailers means time is a luxury they simply don’t have.
The result? My mother was fitted with great technology, but she was sent home without the one thing she actually needed:
Understanding!
The 92-Year-Old Challenge
My mother is as I’ve said 92, and, like many of her generation, rather sceptical of anything that promises the world but feels like ‘a fiddle’.
- The Expectation Gap: She was led to believe these devices would “fix” her hearing, specifically at her crowded coffee mornings. When they didn’t provide 100% clarity in a room full of clattering china, she felt they had failed.
- The Habit Gap: She only wears them when she thinks she needs them. As we’ve discussed in many blogs here before, that’s not how the brain works. To acclimatise, the brain needs constant stimulation.
- The Dexterity Gap: Miniature tech is marvellous, but for 92-year-old fingers and failing eyesight, it can be a source of immense frustration rather than freedom.
Because the time wasn’t taken to counsel her—to manage her expectations, to walk her through the “brain training” phase, and to simply listen to her fears—she has now decided that “the modern world is a bit rubbish” and the hearing aids are going in a drawer.
That is a tragedy of wasted potential.
Why People Matter More Than Microchips
This experience has brought home to me why the team in Harpenden does things differently. When you visit the team, you aren’t just buying a piece of hardware; you are investing in time.
- Counseling: It’s the hours spent understanding how you live, not just what your audiogram says.
- Expectation Management: It’s the honesty of an expert saying, “This won’t make you 18 again, but here is how we can make your world significantly better.”
- Empathy: It’s the patience required to help someone struggling with dexterity or technology-phobia feel empowered rather than defeated.
Success is a Partnership
The difference between success and failure in hearing care is rarely the brand of the hearing aid. It’s the person sitting across from you.
Despite the numerous video blogs featuring audiologists promoting a specific hearing aid and extolling its technological virtues, the reality is, that for most people, including the team at HHP, the features inside a device matter far less than the impact those features can have when the hearing aid is correctly selected and tuned for an individual’s needs.
The HHP team firmly believes their role is to recommend the best solution for someone’s hearing, rather than allowing people to choose based on what they think they want or what online influencers have persuaded them to ask for. Websites and vloggers often claim, “this product is better than that one”, encouraging people to request devices by name. Why? Because product promotion pays. And that’s where I’ve come to truly appreciate the difference between the HHP approach and what my mother experienced elsewhere.
The team at HHP have the experience, training, and clinical judgement to make those decisions for patients. They see too many people wearing hearing aids that were unsuitable from the start for exactly this reason. They can rescue many failed fittings simply by investing time, care, and a genuine desire to make things as good as they can possibly be.
As a family, we can encourage my mother all we want, but we aren’t the experts. She needs an advocate—a professional who could impart the belief that the struggle of the first few weeks would be worth the reward.
If you, or a loved one, feel like your hearing aids are “failing” or sitting in a drawer, please don’t give up on the technology. It might just be that you haven’t had the right conversation yet.
If you’re able to travel to Harpenden, come and talk to the HHP team. And maybe your investment in your hearing won’t end up as a bad experience, but as a life-changing success.
Tel: 01582 767218
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