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Growth of AuD programs found to increase training in counseling

when patients do not accept their hearing loss or when they resist improving their situation. Audiologists are ideally positioned to provide the psychological and emotional support that patients need as they progress through the help-seeking process. However, most audiologists have not received training in counseling. Because of the impact that hearing loss has on self-concept and interpersonal relationships, audiologists are generally aware that they must attend to each patient’s psychological and emotional states.1-3 They know they must ask questions such as, is the patient uncomfortable asking for help? Is he self-conscious about his body image? Does she prefer the status quo to the discomfort involved with change? Is he experiencing family or occupational stress because of hearing loss? Is she angry, upset, withdrawn, overwhelmed, or depressed because hearing loss has adversely affected her life? Audiologists must not only note these reactions in patients, but also respond to them. The appropriate response will help patients address their fears, work through self-imposed barriers, and “choose growth.”4 Ineffective responses, of course, will leave the patient even more upset, more angry, and more determined to reject help. The process of recognizing and responding to these reactions in a supportive manner is the essence of “audiologic counseling.”5 Counseling is an acknowledged part of the audiologist’s scope of practice.6 However, master’s level training programs in audiology have usually not addressed the development of counseling skills. In 1986, McCarthy, Culpepper, and Lucks found that only 12% of audiology programs reported requiring counseling coursework.7 Little change was noted in follow-up studies in 1994 and 1997.8,9 Yet, when students were required to take a counseling course, most of them indicated receiving a moderate to major improvement in their counseling ability.10,11 In the last few years, the number of doctor of audiology (AuD) programs has increased dramatically. The purpose of this study was to answer two questions: (1) How many AuD programs include audiologic counseling in their curricula, and (2) what are the learning objectives of the courses offered? The latter question was posed to describe overall trends in course instruction.