One of their tests involves sheets with different images on them, and they ask the child to point to the image they are asking for. They asked my child to point to the popcorn, the hot dog, and had a different sheet that had both an image of a cake and a cupcake and asked her to point to the cupcake.
As one of the only clinics in Guelph that does hearing tests for children under 5, I do expect them to know that many professionals including the AAP recommend no popcorn and hot dogs for children under 5. Also, you expect a child that’s not even two to differientiate between a cupcake and an actual cake? Some good images for younger children - a dog, cat, farm animals, fruit, different types of vehicles. Please start providing your patients with age appropriate content. At the end of this session the audiologist tells my husband to bring our daughter back in a couple months to do this test again when she’s “more mature”. I would just like to express this was a service that we had to pay for, and the issue wasn’t with my daughter, she was guaranteed to fail because of the clinics lack of understanding of what’s appropriate for younger children. She should be retested free of charge.
On top of all of this, I went to submit our claim and found that they gave us a receipt with another patients information.
Feeling frustrated with the lack of organization and knowledge connect hearing displayed.
Edited to add:
Went in to get our receipt in our daughters name. I brought my frustrations up. The receptionist expressed that they have been doing hearing tests on children for 11 years and that they don’t have say on the templates and process, that it’s the government. She said they have these pictures for how the words are pronounced (which doesn’t matter for my daughter as she doesn’t talk, and they were asking her to point to the object hence the age appropriate comment) She was quick to place blame. She said that my husband should have spoke up about the templates, and I should have been there, that there was another test they could have done. Well he did, and it was obvious that that specific test wasn’t working, if theres another test available why didn’t the audiologist offer it at the time? I expressed that it may be a good idea for the clinic and their patients if they did a prescreening with their younger children so they are aware of limitations and expectations. No apology, understanding, or an offer to speak to the audiologist. Needless to say, they lost a customer, we won’t be returning to this clinic, or recommending them in the future.