NHCA 2021 Virtual Conference

Co-Presenters/Co-Authors:
John Merkley, U.S. Army Public Health Center
Kathy Gates, zCore Business Solutions, Inc.

Efforts to improve access to care prompted the Veterans Administration (VA) to change their policy, allowing certified Hearing Technicians (HTs) to conduct pure tone audiometric exams for established patients. Changes in DoD regulations have increased the need for certified HTs across the DoD, especially in the Army Reserve and Army National Guard. In 2019, the DoD Hearing Center of Excellence (HCE), in collaboration with the VA, and with support from the Council for Accreditation in Occupational Hearing Conservation (CAOHC), began Joint Incentive Fund (JIF) pilot distance learning (DL) courses to train and certify Hearing Technicians. Training is conducted in three phases: a didactic, lecture portion using Adobe Connect Classroom or Microsoft Teams; a practical, hands-on phase completed onsite with either a CAOHC-certified Course Director or a trained audiology practicum instructor; and concluding with the online, CAOHC Occupational Hearing Conservationist certification exam. Between May and September, 2020, the DoD and VA completed five distributed learning workshops. This presentation will describe the successes, challenges, and lessons learned from the JIF DL program to date.

Learning Objectives:
As a result of this Continuing Education Activity, readers will be able to:
1) Identify two positive outcomes of the DoD/VA distance learning model of Hearing Technician certification.
2) Describe two challenges in Hearing Technician training faced by the DoD/VA distance learning team.
3) Describe how distance learning collaboration has benefitted DoD and VA audiology practices.