My Working Day: Martin Cromb, chief audiologist at the Children's University Hospital, Temple Street, Dublin, says there has been a whole range of new testing equipment in the past five years
I head up the audiology department which has a staff of four - three audiology staff members and a secretary. I start my day between 7.15am and 7.30am, checking through phone messages and e-mails with my secretary. The clinical work starts at about 9am. Clinical work takes up about 60 per cent of my time, the rest of which is occupied by managerial work.
The audiology department is a diagnostic unit which means that we carry out hearing tests and assess the functioning of the different parts of the ear. We don't provide hearing aids. If we detect hearing loss, we refer the patient to a community health centre to be fitted with a hearing aid.
We carry out tests on children from birth to age 18. There are different tests depending on the child's age. These range from behavioural or distraction tests for children aged seven months to about four years to tests for older children in which the sounds are transmitted through headphones.
In general, we take referrals from maternity hospitals and other paediatric hospitals. We are seeing increasing numbers of children from maternity hospitals.
Babies who are in intensive care for more than 48 hours are sent to us for hearing tests. Also, if the mother had an infection during pregnancy or if the baby was starved of oxygen at birth, a hearing test is recommended. Children and babies who have meningitis are priority patients for us and are seen quickly to check for hearing problems.
We also get a number of referrals of children who have fluid on their ear drums (glue ear). This results in a temporary hearing loss which sometimes requires the surgical implantation of grommets.
It is most important to discover the hearing impairment as early as possible so that an associated speech and language delay can be limited.
At the moment, we are trying to get universal screening for babies. However, we don't have the resources for that at present. The number of trained audiology staff is quite low internationally, and in the Republic, there isn't anywhere audiologists can train. The Irish Society of Audiology is lobbying for change in this area.
On a personal level, I find my job very rewarding. It is particularly satisfying when you detect problems at an early age. Technically, the testing equipment is a lot more advanced now and there has been a whole range of new equipment in the past five years.
In conversation with Sylvia Thompson