Steve’s story

I’ve got a mild to moderate sensorineural hearing loss and all through my childhood I couldn’t deal with it. When I was in my 20s, I started working in admin at Australian Hearing. That’s when the penny dropped. I thought: “look, I can’t be a sound engineer because my hearing is not very good, but I reckon I can do this audiology thing and give it a pretty good shake.” 

In my career, I have found that one of the benefits of having a hearing loss is being able to relate to people. My patients will say: “oh, the hearing aids sound like this” and I automatically get what they are talking about and that reassures them.

If audiology is something that you’re interested in and helping people (which is what we do), having a hearing loss gives you a little bit of extra just understanding of what people are going through. I think it makes you a better audiologist.