When Chantal Kealey was in high school, her mother brought home information
about speech language pathology. The more Kealey looked into that profession,
the more she thought it would be something she'd like to do.
"I eventually started my master's degree in speech-language pathology and
within my first semester, I had to take audiology courses," says Kealey. Kealey
is the manager of audiology for the Canadian Association of Speech-Language
Pathologists and Audiologists.
"Right away, I just felt my interest shift to audiology, so I switched
my track and completed my masters degree in audiology," she says. "Coincidentally,
that's a similar story for a lot of audiologists," she says. "A lot of audiologists
have started on the speech-language path and converted over."
Patrick Feeney was also one of those students who started with an interest
in speech pathology. While attending college, Feeney took a test that matched
a student's personality with the personality of professionals working in different
fields.
"That test result suggested my personality was similar to people who are
in the field of speech pathology," says Feeney. Not knowing much about speech-language
pathology, he took a course.
"I found after several weeks into the course that I really enjoyed the
audiology part much more than the speech pathology part," says Feeney. "It
was an excellent fit for my interests, my skills and academic training, so
I never looked back and I enrolled. After I took the prerequisites, I started
on the master's degree, and a couple of years later, I had my degree in audiology."
Feeney is now a professor of audiology at the same university where he
studied.
Alison Grimes fell into audiology by accident. Based in Los Angeles, Grimes
is now president of the American Academy of Audiology. "I started in music,"
she says. "To fulfill a requirement, I took a class in phonetics which got
me interested in speech pathology."
Grimes says that when she was attending school, speech pathology and audiology
were in the same department.
"So once I got into speech pathology, I realized that audiology was much
more interesting, and so I went from the phonetics class into speech pathology
into audiology," she says.
While at first glance, music and audiology seem to be two very different
areas, Grimes says that there is quite a bit of related information.
"It's all about sound, hearing, acoustics and things like that, so there's
actually a remarkable amount of tie-in," she says. "My job is a combination
of direct patient care and administration," she says of her current position.
Half of her job is seeing patients, while the other half is dedicated to the
administrative work required to run the clinic.
Grimes adds that what she likes most about working as an audiologist is
knowing she can make a difference in people's lives. "When they come and
see me, they're having hearing problems, they're having communication problems,
and if I'm doing a good job of diagnosing and treating their problems, then
they end up in better shape," she says. "That's very satisfying."
Feeney's work week is split between teaching classes, doing
administrative work for the clinic, seeing patients and devoting time to research.
But he says his favorite part of being an audiologist has always been working
with patients.
"The most rewarding part is working with patients on the rehabilitation
or treatment side," says Feeney. "So patients who have a hearing problem and
need help with hearing, whether it be counseling or help with their hearing
aid or other assisted listening devices, the satisfaction factor is pretty
high there when I'm able to help people in that regard."
Having worked as a clinical audiologist with a specialty in newborn hearing
screening, Kealey says some of the more rewarding moments of her job involved
early detection of permanent hearing loss in newborns.
"When I was working in more of a clinical setting, it was extremely rewarding
to be able to identify hearing loss in babies. Although it was very emotional
for the families (and for me) I was able to help families cope with that and
have them follow the right steps to early intervention.
"As a result, families would see their child being able to have normal
speech and language because there was early notification and early intervention,"
says Kealey.
However, this part of her career has also proved to be difficult as well.
"Not only was working with families of babies with hearing loss definitely
the most rewarding part, but it was also the most difficult part," says Kealey.
"There's nothing harder than having to give a diagnosis to parents of a newborn
baby that there's hearing loss and that it's permanent, and those things get
very difficult."
Because audiologists work with people at such a close level, Kealey says
that those who hope to pursue this profession must enjoy working with people.
"You're going to be working closely, hands-on with patients and some of
these patients that do get diagnosed with hearing loss will come back to you
several times and you will need to establish a relationship, a rapport, with
that patient," says Kealey. "So you need to really like to work with people."
Kealey adds that she would encourage anyone considering this profession
to pursue it because of the incredible rewards and challenges it brings.
"There are so many rewards once you start practicing, and when you're working
with people and they thank you for making their life better, it's a great
feeling."