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Dr. Robyn Cox – I Never Worked with Her and Yet I Could Not Have Done My Job Without Her

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I mean that statement quite literally. Over the course of the last 25 years the two of us have shared the podium at an event maybe twice and had lunch at the same table at Audiology Now conferences no more than once. However, through her work she has had a nearly daily influence on my career. Let me give you an example or 10 of how she has impacted us all. The Independent Hearing Aid Fitting Forum (IHAFF). The Profile of Hearing Aid Benefit (PHAB). The Abbreviated Profile of Hearing Aid Benefit (APHAB). Satisfaction with Amplification in Daily Life (SADL). Speech in Noise (SIN) test. Revised Speech in Noise (RSIN) test. International Outcome Inventory for Hearing Aids (IOI-HA). Speech Intelligibility Rating (SIR) test. Profile of Hearing Aid Performance (PHAP). Connected Speech Test (CST).

Since very early in my career I have either evaluated or routinely used at least eight of those 10 tools. In fact, we have used the APHAB with every person upon whom we have fitted a hearing aid (or two) over the course of the past 13 years. If you then add her work in areas such as acclimatization, clinical outcome measures, evidence-based practice, and early acoustic measurements to the mix what you see is a body of work that fundamentally defined the best example for the clinical practice of hearing aid fitting and evaluation of our time. The more I look at her contributions to our field the more I am awed by the depth and breadth of them. Though the two of us never worked together I will be eternally in her debt for the positive impact her contributions to audiology and hearing aids have had upon my own career. I wish her good luck for the future and hope that someone will be able to come along and fill the gaping hole that will be left in her absence.

 

About the author

Donald Hayes, PhD

Donald Hayes, PhD, is director of audiology at Unitron Canada in Kitchener, Ontario.