2025 Annual Conference Sessions

CONFERENCE SESSIONS

Keynote Session: Beyond Blind Blaming: Discover the Hidden Truth to Empower Your Success

Have you ever felt trapped in a cycle of frustration—pointing fingers at difficult patients, rigid systems, or even yourself—without finding real solutions to the challenges holding you back? As a Hearing Aid Dispenser or Audiologist, the demands of your profession can make it easy to fall into patterns of blame and stagnation. In this transformative keynote, inspired by the groundbreaking concepts in Beyond Blind Blaming, you’ll uncover the hidden dynamics that keep individuals, teams, and organizations in the hearing care field stuck in a blame loop.
What You’ll Gain:
  • Understand the Blame Loop: Learn how blame perpetuates cycles of frustration in patient care, team collaboration, and business growth—and how to break free.
  • Address Root Causes: Discover how to identify and solve the underlying issues affecting your practice, from patient communication to organizational challenges.
  • Empower Your Practice: Gain practical strategies to shift from frustration to clarity, enabling you to create better outcomes for your patients, foster teamwork, and grow your professional success.
Why This Matters to You:
This keynote is packed with compelling success stories and real-world examples that directly apply to the hearing care industry. You'll leave with tools to:
  • Handle challenging patients and conversations with greater confidence and empathy.
  • Foster a blame-free, collaborative environment within your team or practice.
  • Build resilience and adaptability to navigate the unique challenges of hearing healthcare.
Whether you’re striving to improve patient satisfaction, enhance team dynamics, or grow your practice, this keynote will equip you to take ownership, move beyond surface-level frustrations, and achieve sustainable success.Take Action Today
Don’t miss this opportunity to transform the way you approach your career and your relationships—with patients, colleagues, and yourself. Leave inspired, empowered, and ready to unlock your full potential in the ever-evolving field of hearing care.

Understanding Implantable Hearing Solutions: A Surgeon’s Perspective

This comprehensive course is designed for hearing healthcare professionals seeking to deepen their understanding of implantable solutions from a surgical standpoint. Dr. Varun Varadarjan will explore the various types of implantable devices, their clinical applications, and the surgical considerations involved in their implantation. Through case study discussions, the course will cover candidacy and outcomes along with addressing common questions from candidates and how hearing healthcare professionals can support patients in their care.  By the end of the course, attendees will be equipped with the knowledge to make informed decisions regarding referring for implantable solutions.

Session Sponsored By: Cochlear Americas

Counseling Techniques Supporting Standard of Care

Effective counseling practices make a tremendous difference in hearing healthcare. Being able to communicate the benefits of advanced technology in simple language patients can understand is the key element in this process. This course will provide suggestions for consumer-friendly language based on clear benefits when making a strong recommendation for premium technology as the standard of care.

Beyond the Audiogram, Understanding the Lived Experience of Individuals with Hearing Difficulties

It is well-documented that gradual hearing loss of adult onset is linked to several conditions that affect health and wellness, yet many of the components of the hearing assessment such as air conduction thresholds and word recognition in quiet do not fully capture the extent of communication handicap experienced by persons with hearing loss.
 
This course reviews several conditions linked to untreated hearing loss including loneliness, social isolation, fatigue and cognitive decline, and how they can be assessed quickly and accurately in the clinic. The course will also address how these wellness measures can be used in the hearing aid selection and fitting process.

Designing & Building the Culture You Want

The presentation, "Designing & Building the Culture You Want," outlines a strategic approach to understanding, assessing, and transforming organizational culture. It begins by defining culture and its foundational concepts, encouraging organizations to evaluate their current state by identifying observable indicators or methods to define it. A key focus is establishing clear, actionable core values and translating them into behavioral standards that guide the organization. Leadership is central to this process, as leaders must model these behaviors, recognize and reward employees who exemplify them, and ensure policies and practices, such as performance management and handbooks, align with the organization’s values.

Additionally, the presentation highlights the importance of navigating generational differences in workplace values, acknowledging the unique priorities of Baby Boomers, Generation X, Millennials, and Generation Z. It advocates for identifying shared values and fostering open dialogue to create alignment. To build and sustain the desired culture, the presentation offers practical steps for designing an action plan that includes communicating standards, promoting accountability, and maintaining recognition systems. This approach ensures that the culture reflects organizational goals while supporting an inclusive, adaptive, and value-driven environment.


IHS Policy Perspectives and Updates for the Hearing Professional

We will provide a review of relevant legislative, regulatory, and other activities being undertaken by the federal government, agencies, work groups, and organizations that seek to address hearing health care policy. In the US, these will include updates on the application of the Over-the-Counter Hearing Aid act, Medicare proposals, Veterans’ care, World Health Organization activities, and much more. For those in our Canadian provinces, attendees will hear about federal and provincial support and activities for which IHS is involved and promoting. The representative will also review new resources and news from the International Hearing Society that affects the role and advancement of hearing health professionals in their knowledge, professionalism, and practice.