The Sound of Progress in Hearing Care with Dr. Douglas Beck

 As we traverse the audiology best practices and their transformation, Dr. Beck, our new co-host, sheds light on the crucial balance between comprehensive diagnostic assessments and functional hearing evaluations. Together, we celebrate the remarkable progress in hearing technology and patient care, all while reducing clinic return rates and enhancing satisfaction – milestones that remind us why we're passionate about what we do.

Recalling the days of Ask Jeeves seems almost comical now, but it underscores just how far we’ve journeyed with digital hearing tech and the internet's explosion. Our conversation unspools the rich tapestry of audiology's history, from the birth of Audiology Online to the personal histories that intertwine with our professional pursuits. We offer a behind-the-scenes glimpse into the unexpected pathways that lead to audiology, and Doug's especially was anything but a straight line. Instead, it's a living mosaic of serendipitous encounters and evolving technology.

Our episode crescendos with a symphony of shared passions and professional milestones, from pioneering cochlear implant research to the artistry of intraoperative monitoring – the kind described in Dr. Beck's authored "Handbook of Intraoperative Monitoring." It’s not all science and sound waves, though; our love for music and near brushes with Beatlemania fame weave through our discussion, a reminder of how varied experiences enrich not just our careers but our lives. We round off with touching tributes to our mentors, those giants on whose shoulders we stand, and look forward to the many harmonies yet to come in the world of audiology.

Have a question? Email us at: info@hearingmatterspodcast.com 

Transcript

Blaise M. Delfino, M.S. - HIS: 0:06

You're tuned in to the Hearing Matters podcast, the show that discusses hearing technology, best practices, and a growing global epidemic: Hearing loss. I'm your host, Blaise Delf ino, and this is an episode I have personally been waiting for for quite some time. If you've followed us on social media the past, you know, week and a half we announced Dr. Douglas Beck as our new co-host, and joining us today is the one, the only, Dr. Douglas Beck. Doug, welcome to the Hearing Matters podcast, not only as a guest this time, but as a co-host.

Dr. Douglas L. Beck: 0:41

Thank you, Blaise. It's really great to work with you again and I'm honored to be part of the Hearing Matters podcast, and I'm looking forward to what we're going to do.

Blaise M. Delfino, M.S. - HIS: 0:49

Doug, you and I have known each other for going on eight years now and the evolution that has occurred in our industry just the past eight years, it's been pretty incredible. My question to you how will your Hearing Matters podcast episodes be a little different from existing offerings, if you will?

Dr. Douglas L. Beck: 1:10

Well, what I want to do is I want to stay in the professional realm. 90% of the interviews that I'm going to be working on will have guests, and there'll be people like otolaryngologists, otologists, neuratologists, psychologists, general practitioners, psychologists, whoever else I didn't mention. But I want to talk about the interaction between audiology and other professions. I want to talk about bringing our best practices forward. More and more people seem to be paying attention to best practices last few years, but in truth, it's been recommended for over 30 years From AAA and AASHA and IHS, and audiologists and hearing care providers, hearing aid dispensers, have not really been doing best practices on every patient. It looks like it's about one out of five patients who actually gets that, and I want to bring through the rationale. I want to bring through the outcomes and the results of doing it properly, because it makes a world of difference.

Blaise M. Delfino, M.S. - HIS: 2:09

Doug, when you mentioned best practices for our consumers tuned in right now hearing aid users, ci users can you just briefly tell us what best practices are and why they're so important for the patient?

Dr. Douglas L. Beck: 2:25

Yeah. So most people who have had a hearing test think of it as press the button when you hear the beep and that's fine. But that's level one. That is the audiogram where we're giving them tones to listen to which correlate with speech sounds as far as the spectrum of speech from perhaps 250 to 8,000 hertz. So we haven't pressed buttons at all those octaves. Those are not speech sounds, those are artificial sounds. What best practices say is you should do that test that's called air conduction and bone conduction, press the button when you hear the beeps. But then there's speech audiometry, there's impedance audiometry, which is 10 panograms, and reflexes when you need to do those things. Autoacoustic emissions.

Dr. Douglas L. Beck: 3:04

There's lots of things we do for diagnostics, but that's not the end point. That's the beginning point. The end point is, after we go through a best practice model, we do our diagnostic testing and then we do things that are suggested, such as speech and noise testing, to actually replicate the problem which brings in most of our patients is the inability to understand speech and noise. Then we have listening and communication assessments. These are very important. These are things like the COSI, which is the client-oriented scale of intervention. It could be the AFAB, abbreviated profile hearing aid benefit, hhie, hhia the international outcomes inventory. There's a bunch of them.

Dr. Douglas L. Beck: 3:40

Most professionals do not do these things. That's really unfortunate because the few practices who do it are thriving. They are literally. They're all over the internet and they're based in best practices. They're doing very, very well because they're taking better care of the patients by being aware not just of the diagnostics but of the functional hearing results. That is, how is the patient doing in the real world, because that's what we ultimately care about. Very important to do diagnostics extraordinarily well, because that tells us who needs to be referred to a physician for medical or surgical care, whatever is appropriate. However, these other measures that are in best practice guidelines from American Academy of Audiology, american Speech-Language Hearing Association, international Hearing Society, they avail to us not just the appropriate diagnostic testing but the functional testing to see how the patient gets by in the real world. If you do all of that work, you know exactly what type of instrumentation or technology the patient will benefit from.

Blaise M. Delfino, M.S. - HIS: 4:40

Doug, as a former private practice owner, I can tell you, when you implement best practices across the board not just real ear measurement that is one of the many best practices that we need to implement as hearing care professionals but the comprehensive diagnostics, real ear measurement, implementing the use of the AFAB when you have this well-rounded picture of best practices and you are implementing these. I can speak from experience. I saw a memory on Facebook. We went two years zero returns. That's pretty good.

Dr. Douglas L. Beck: 5:14

Two years zero returns, that's pretty good.

Blaise M. Delfino, M.S. - HIS: 5:16

Because when you implement best practice, you take care of the patient. Things are really going to flow in the clinic. Doug, we have been hosting Hearing Matters podcast since 2019. I shared on LinkedIn. You may not have known this, but you were the first remote guest we ever recorded. I had just purchased the new podcast equipment specifically to record remote guests. All I said to myself was I hope this all works and it actually records. The reason I bring this up is because it worked. That was in 2020, which we all know what happened in 2020. The podcast was a great way for us to remain in contact with our current patients, but also hearing care providers and individuals interested in hearing healthcare. Podcasting didn't really exist. It didn't exist when you started in the field of audiology.

Dr. Douglas L. Beck: 6:16

Right when I started, it was about just before World War II. No, that's not true. I've been an audiologist now for 40 years. When I first got online with audiology, that was like 1998.

Blaise M. Delfino, M.S. - HIS: 6:30

You were one of the first audiologists online. Yeah, tell us about that, please.

Dr. Douglas L. Beck: 6:34

Let's dive in 1998, 1999, my friend, amy LaCalle and Bill LaCalle. They're married. Amy is an AUD audiologist, bill's a certified public accountant. They had this idea for something that was called what did? We call it audiology online. Never heard of it. We started that almost 25 years ago. Wow, amy and I had known each other through our studies and stuff and they invited me.

Dr. Douglas L. Beck: 7:02

I was the editor-in-chief and the president of audiology online in the early days and I want to say the early days we, we would go, bill and I would fly over the country all the time to try to get corporate partners. Because people thought we were nuts, right, because I had a private practice with four offices and and, and you know, leaving clinical practice to go into an online venture didn't make a lot of sense to a lot of people. But I chose to do it after really getting to know Bill and Amy and being very impressed with with what they were going to do. So bill and I would fly all over the country and Most of the largest hearing aid and cochlear implant manufacturers. We would say you know, we're starting a website, it's called audiology online and blah, blah, blah, and. And they would say, oh, we're already online and you'd go look online. You'd put in I'm not going to mention any of the names, but you put in the major hearing aid manufacturers in the time, the big six, big seven, big eight back in those days, and what they had what is yellow page ad, you know, would have the corporate name, their phone number, their address. That was their online presence. Most of them did not know the difference 25 years ago between an email address and a website address. So it was ripe and it was great.

Dr. Douglas L. Beck: 8:07

And, and one of the things I mentioned to you a few days ago, when we started audiology online back in whatever year it was 98 or 99 there were no videos. I mean, you could see stuff. That's why I was yeah, but it but it was like looking at a newspaper and people would type. And when I was first teaching for Arizona, the ATSU graduate program, somewhere in Arizona, outside of Phoenix, you know, I was even teaching anatomy and for a neuro anatomy, neurophysiology, and all the professors would type their thing and then the students would type back and 25 years ago, so there was no, you know, facetime, there was no videos, there was no we, we were shocked.

Dr. Douglas L. Beck: 8:44

It must have been like in 2001, 2002, when flash came on the on the scene and flash is actually moving pictures on the video. It's having movies on line and now you know people say, oh, of course, everything. You know. You have auditory and you have visual stimulation and and all that stuff and we have Google and wonderful things. But you know what the biggest website was when we started audiology online?

Blaise M. Delfino, M.S. - HIS: 9:09

It was ask jeeps that was, I remember asked jeeps, I do remember, and the branding was like red.

Dr. Douglas L. Beck: 9:16

So yeah, that's a guy in a tuxedo, a big old guy in a tuxedo, and he was jeeps the butler, I think, and and I maybe it's still either, I don't know but Google didn't exist and and so you know, I've been online doing a lot of stuff for a long time and with a lot of help. I mean, I didn't know anything about any of it, you know, and luckily, right place, right time, bill and Amy contacted me and and I had enough faith in them that I said, okay, I'm not sure where this was going, but you know, and we took a stab at it, and audiology online is still a great website. I don't have anything to do with it anymore for a long time now. I left in 2005, but you know, it's a powerhouse and they really thought it through and they did it right and and it's it's a great, great Building site. I think they're still building it.

Blaise M. Delfino, M.S. - HIS: 10:01

It's how we get our CE use right. The experience on audiology online is is really spectacular. Yeah, so such an exciting time, doug, because you have seen the evolution of Digital hearing technology. So you have the technological aspect, you have the diagnostic aspect and now you also have the social media, internet aspect. I mean this has to be such an exciting time for you. Obviously, I'm biased, being the original host of the hearing matters podcast, but this is this is gonna be exciting it is.

Dr. Douglas L. Beck: 10:34

I'm really happy to be doing this. You know I've done a lot of podcasts and webinars in the last four or five years and and they've gone fine. You know, some of them went viral, some of them didn't, and it's. It is exciting because I am looking forward to working with so many of the people that I've worked with in the past and and meeting new Audiologists and other scientists who can bring hearing health care to the next level absolutely Doug Audiology.

Blaise M. Delfino, M.S. - HIS: 10:59

Most audiologists don't wake up one day and say you know what? I'm gonna go be an audiologist Myself. I am genetically predisposed.

Dr. Douglas L. Beck: 11:09

I should let me explain that that's a brilliant statement, but the truth of the matter is your mom's been involved with it for decades. Your dad is a doctor of audiology and I've known your dad since forever. And yes, oh, you are genetically predisposed to hearing health care right.

Blaise M. Delfino, M.S. - HIS: 11:24

So, with your journey and your story, how the heck did you hear about audiology? Why audiology? Where did you start?

Dr. Douglas L. Beck: 11:32

You know it's such an old story. I probably have it wrong now, I don't remember. But you know, in the late 70s I had gotten out of the Air Force and I was looking for what am I gonna do? Because I had no job, no career, no anything. I had a couple of guitars and a backpack and After getting discharged honorably discharged from the United States Air Force in the mid 70s, I was looking for college and I had no money, totally broke.

Dr. Douglas L. Beck: 11:55

Nobody in my family had ever been to college. I was the first person that ever went and I had the good fortune to apply to State University of New York at Buffalo, which I did because I was living in New York City and the state schools were the cheapest. I luckily they turned out to be extraordinary. So I got accepted at UB and I went and I started taking classes and everything was going fine. And then I realized, oh my gosh, you know this is gonna get me a bachelor's degree and I I didn't know what a bachelor's degree was. To be honest, I thought you get a degree, a college degree. I thought that was the generic term, college degree. So I did that and I wound up going to communication, sciences and disorders.

Dr. Douglas L. Beck: 12:34

Out of luck, because I went to see some counselor and she happened to know Jack Katz, who I had never heard of at that point, and Jack was in the audiology department doing an extraordinarily brilliant job. They only accepted, I think, eight or nine students into that audiology. No, no, that was in my master's program We'll get to that in a minute but a very, very small program and one of the most famous audiologists in the world was there. So the counselor said to me gee, doug, you're really good at math and science, maybe you should think about audio. Oh, and you're a musician. So she put all this stuff together, because you fill in the 50 questions of who you are and what you want to do and stuff like that. So she said music, math, science, you should be an audiologist. And I said great, you mean installing car stereos. That's fabulous. Right, sign me up, I'm in. I didn't know what an audiologist was. So I went and talked to Jack and I was blown away by this guy. I mean, dr Katz is one of the friendliest, most intelligent people I've ever met and I had been leafing through some of his books in the waiting room to see him on auditory processing disorders, the Staggers-Bondet word test, things like that, and I was just absolutely amazed. This was a world that I knew nothing about.

Dr. Douglas L. Beck: 13:42

I met with Dr Katz for whatever an hour or something and then I matriculated through the Communicative Disorder in the Sciences Department. Then, after graduating with a bachelor's degree, who knew? Apparently you needed a master's to practice 40 years ago? So they only accepted eight I want to say seven, eight, nine students and I was incredibly lucky I got in. I think it was because I owed Jack money. No, that's the general. I was lucky enough to get in and it was brilliant. It was a master's problem. We did gross brain dissections with Dr Katz. We were doing human brain dissections. We're doing auditory processing disorders. Jack had obviously been a champion in auditory processing disorders and still is. And it was just you open your brain and they just keep inserting more and more information and it's absolutely stunning.

Dr. Douglas L. Beck: 14:35

And then from there I was lucky enough that cochlear implants hadn't yet been FDA approved. So I got a job offer because I was doing all the speech science work with Jack Katz. And I got an offer from the House Seer Institute to do speech science work for their cochlear implant program. So I remember saying to Dr Katz what is a cochlear implant, and Jack didn't have advanced knowledge, but he knew what it was and nobody had advanced knowledge because it didn't really exist. It was experimental at that point.

Dr. Douglas L. Beck: 15:06

And I spoke to Tom White.

Dr. Douglas L. Beck: 15:07

Tom was the finest clinician I've ever known. He was also at the State University of New York. I spoke to Derek Sanders, who wrote one of the first rehab books, and he was also at State University of New York at Buffalo, and they all said to me the same thing. They said how's your institute in Los Angeles, man? That's a long way away, that's 3,000 miles, and when you get there they don't have a great reputation for keeping audiologists.

Dr. Douglas L. Beck: 15:30

And I thought, wow, yeah, no, I was warned that it would be a great, wonderful place because they had otologic medical group, which is one of the world's busiest otology practices, so I'd get to work there for my clinical stuff and be a researcher at the House of the University. I thought, yeah, that's too good. So I was married at the time, so my wife and I talked about it and we decided to do it. So we had to buy a Ford Econoline van, we took my dog, we took a bunch of music and we went to Los Angeles and day one we got robbed. We were out walking the dog in Hollywood. Oh my gosh Robbed my van, and so that, welcome to.

Blaise M. Delfino, M.S. - HIS: 16:06

Los.

Dr. Douglas L. Beck: 16:06

Angeles. So that was cool and then we stayed there for a number of years. But it was the very best because then I, because of my speech science work with Jack, which was a lot of examining the stimuli in the SSW, we would do spectrograms. So you'd say upstairs in one ear, downtown in the other ear, and they'd overlap. Well, we would look at the spectrograms to decide which was the best representation of the speech sounds and very intense, very intense and very cool. That's exactly what the house of your institute was doing at that time on cochlear implants. Because you would have people Now back in those days you had to have 110 dB thresholds to get a cochlear implant and you'd have to go through a psychological evaluation and the MAC battery, which was the minimal auditory capabilities battery which was, came out of UCSF.

Dr. Douglas L. Beck: 16:55

There were four centers doing implants back in those days. There was Los Angeles, ucsf, salt Lake City, in New York and we all worked collaboratively. It was a brilliant, wonderful time. So Owens and Kessler, I think, put together the MAC battery and we were looking at the speech stimuli in there, because you'd have patients with 110 dB thresholds and you'd be giving them say the word went, say the word went and no two were the same. You know people who think they can do a monitored live voice. I'm sorry but it's just not clinically valid or scientifically valid. If you say, say the word shot, say the word think, but you can never say them the same way twice. So we would have these digital representations of them and then we'd look at the spectrograms to decide which was the best amplitude versus time. You know modulated signal. So it was very, very heady work and it was awesome.

Dr. Douglas L. Beck: 17:46

I worked with the best team, I think, in hearing sciences. You know back in those days, jeff Dan Howard, who was at UCSB, and a Von Sineger who's a legend in neurophysiology, manny Don, mickey Hart not from the Grateful Dead, a different Mickey Hart Donna Asquit, just you know Ed Cuddy he was our psychoacoustician and all these people trying to figure out this little tiny bit of science. And back then we didn't have digital cochlear implants, we had analog on. So it was a 16 kilohertz carrier wave and you would put sound on top of that and it was single channel and it was. But you know there's some people who did extraordinarily well. They could use a phone not many people, but there were some people back in the analog days, who could be on a telephone with a single channel cochlear implant and, you know, no visual cues at all, obviously, and they could repeat words. And now, of course, we're a million miles past that, where you know, the cochlear implants are magical.

Blaise M. Delfino, M.S. - HIS: 18:42

It's incredible where we are today and you have seen again, you've seen this evolution, those experiences that you had early on in your career. Now you are one of the most prolific authors in audiology. You have over 240 plus publications, a book or two, would you say that those experiences early on in your career gave you that foundation, that inspiration, to become the best version of yourself as an audiologist?

Dr. Douglas L. Beck: 19:12

I would like to think so. I mean the other side of being at house, to be honest, because I spent so much time in the research labs with those phenomenal scientists. I then consequently had to be in the operating room a lot to see if a cochlear implant was truly stimulating. We couldn't do intraoperative true recordings back then of a cochlear implant because, well, multiple reasons we don't have time today. But what we did is we would stimulate through the cochlear implant and see if we got a whole nerve action potential result which is kind of like an ABR, but not exactly. So I got more into that. And then facial nerve monitoring, trigeminal nerve monitoring, three, four and six nerve monitoring and all this stuff.

Dr. Douglas L. Beck: 19:52

And then my career changed after two or three years of cochlear implant research into intraoperative cranial nerve monitoring. And the House Year Institute was the place if you needed to have an acoustic neuroma removed or if you had neurofibromatosis and you had tumors secondary to that. So the skull-based surgery going on there was the best. I mean we would do acoustic neuromas back then with Dr Bill House, dr Daryl Brackman, jim Benikey, ralph Nelson, tony De La Cruz who am I leaving out? John House, bill Luxford, you know any of those guys. I mean we would do acoustic neuromas three hours, four hours, skin to skin, from incision to sutures, and you know most of those patients probably 98% normal facial motion. So I started getting more and more into intraoperative cranial nerve monitoring, which I did for a number of years after that, Did you write a book on that?

Dr. Douglas L. Beck: 20:48

Yeah, yeah. So that book, the Handbook of Interoperative Monitoring, went out of print about 20 or 30 years ago. You know I wrote it a million years ago but I wrote it with, collaboratively with other people who are specialists. We have chapters on visual evoked potential monitoring, auditory nerve monitoring.

Dr. Douglas L. Beck: 21:04

Back in those days we used to have to make our own electrodes under an operating room microscope using almost pure silver wire, and I had so many mentors who I you know Aghe Moller, who's one of the giants, and Tinnitus right. Aghe and I became friends because he was one of the giants also in intraoperative cranial nerve monitoring. So I would go out to Pittsburgh, spend a week or a month with Aghe Moller and he'd be monitoring five, six, seven cases at one time. He worked with a very, very famous neurosurgeon named Peter Genetta. So how could you do that many cases at one time? Well, most of the time you're not involved in a case. So you stick your electrodes into the patient, you wire them up all sterile, all inappropriate universal precautions, doing everything exactly as you're supposed to and then you know, then there's surgery. That goes on for a while before they get down to the neural structures. Once they get to the neural structures. They say you know, dr Moller, we need you in room seven, you know, and he'd scoot over there and do his magic.

Dr. Douglas L. Beck: 21:56

And I learned to multitask, really by watching Aghe Moller, and so it was pretty fascinating. So, yes, I think all of those things, the neurophysiology, intraoperative cranial nerve monitoring, neurophysiology became what I did for the first decade or two of my career. Then I got more into clinical, you know, and it was just an absolutely wonderful, incredible background. And I got all of that because I am lucky. You know, my skill is not any better than any other audiologist. I mean, we're all pretty talented people, to be honest.

Blaise M. Delfino, M.S. - HIS: 22:28

Absolutely.

Dr. Douglas L. Beck: 22:29

Yes, but right place, right time. Dumb luck, you know, and I was just thrilled to have that dumb luck.

Blaise M. Delfino, M.S. - HIS: 23:23

I think a lot about and you and I have talked about this copious amount of times, if you will the idea of being able to balance work and hobbies and life, and how important our hobbies are To kind of take us out of the everyday grind of audiology or of our career. And I don't think our listeners know this. Obviously they don't. This is our first episode together, but you and I are both musicians and you had said when you went out to Los Angeles you packed up your guitar, couple guitars and instruments and you drove out there.

Dr. Douglas L. Beck: 23:56

Right.

Blaise M. Delfino, M.S. - HIS: 23:57

So we're both involved in music. Music and I are inseparable, just like you and music Right. Tell me about your musical experiences. I think this is really important for our listeners tuned in right now to learn this about you.

Dr. Douglas L. Beck: 24:11

Well, ok, the quick story, you know, is when I got out of high school, I didn't go to my high school graduation I got on a plane back in early 70s and I flew to Amsterdam with a backpack and a guitar and I stayed there for a long time playing street corners and stuff In 77, 78, just before going up to college. I was going to stay in New York and be a musician. I had applied for something called Beatlemania, the original at the Wintercourt Theatre, and you know they were stacking a lot of guys together, so you'd have like five guys who played John, you know four guys who played Paul, you'd have three guys who played Ringo, two guys who played George Harris, and you know whatever. And those became the bands that are now traveling around the world. Still, you know, the 40 years later they're still doing Beatlemania shows all over, like Rain. I think most of the guys in Rain, which is a great band, were in Beatlemania, but really, yeah, they didn't. They didn't all open on Broadway. Some of them were seconds or thirds, some of them were in traveling groups other than Rain at that time.

Dr. Douglas L. Beck: 25:07

And so, yeah, I was the first runner up for Ringo. Drums was my first instrument, so I played with that band a number of times and then I got the boot because somebody better than me walked in. So that was cool and back in those days it was great. I don't remember what Phoebe Snow had to do with it, but she was there and I think, working with the producer, to say, oh, I like the sound of this, oh that, no, he has to go. So no, she didn't fire me, but but.

Dr. Douglas L. Beck: 25:33

But Phoebe Snow is well Murray the K, who was a very famous disc jockey in New York. He died at age 60 about 30 years ago, but it was W N Beatle C WNBC AM radio back in the 60s and Murray the K was like a special consultant to the Beetlemania project that opened on Broadway. So when people think about Beetlemania, of course there was the real one that involved the actual Beatles, but then there's the traveling show that most people are familiar with now because they've done over 1,000 shows, and I was in that first group as a runner-up for Ringo, but I never opened with them. And then, many years later, probably my most successful band that I actually did open with was the Jeff Keith band and we had a couple of hit singles throughout the US and throughout Europe. We charted in Europe on the Billboard top.

Blaise M. Delfino, M.S. - HIS: 26:22

Get out Doug.

Dr. Douglas L. Beck: 26:23

Yeah, we were like number 17 or something, but that's you know. So what?

Blaise M. Delfino, M.S. - HIS: 26:29

Well, I think the show will continue to be successful, maybe because of our clinical backgrounds and our passion for hearing health care, but absolutely not because of our hairlines. So you had one when you tried out for Ringo right.

Dr. Douglas L. Beck: 26:46

Right, so I'm proud of this. You go to DouglassLBeckcom, which is my website for my students, right, and you see my Afro from the 70s, which went out beyond my shoulders.

Blaise M. Delfino, M.S. - HIS: 26:55

And the reason that I was, it was massive.

Dr. Douglas L. Beck: 26:57

It was massive. The reason I put that out on my website was because I was speaking at a meeting once with Jerry Northern, who I love. Jerry and I used to tour together. Anyway, we did this thing in England over a period of a week or so. It was fantastic and I was speaking somewhere I can't tell you where Maybe it was the Missouri Academy of Audiology, because I was a president of that 30 years ago or something and I think I invited Jerry to speak and he put up that picture and he said who do you think that is? And nobody in the audience got it and Jerry said that's Doug, that is.

Blaise M. Delfino, M.S. - HIS: 27:28

Doug. Yeah so, doug music, you have a bunch of other hobbies. It is rumored that you have a herd of dogs and horses. Kind of tell us a little bit about your love for animals.

Dr. Douglas L. Beck: 27:42

Well, yeah, that's a very long story too. Right now I have a 10-month-old Dakota's, my German Shepherd. She's an AKC Shepherd.

Blaise M. Delfino, M.S. - HIS: 27:50

She's brilliant and that's the old dog I have. She's very fast. She's been on social media.

Dr. Douglas L. Beck: 27:55

She's been on social media. She's a wonderful dog and I don't have horses at the moment, but yeah, that's, the plan by the end of 2024 is to get a couple more. I do have experience with horses. I used to own a quarter horse when my daughters were little because they were taking horseback lessons and I owned the slowest quarter horse ever this horse. When we bought him, his father was a champion, but he wasn't, which is good, because I don't ride very well. In fact, I ride very, very poorly, but I like riding. I'm very bad at it.

Blaise M. Delfino, M.S. - HIS: 28:33

Doug, january is, I believe, its national mentorship month. From what I've seen on social media. However, it is so important, I believe, to always thank your mentors and, specifically, I have to do this. Thank you, doug, because when I first started in private practice following graduate school, I would say I've self-audited myself. One of my strengths is asking the right questions when I have no idea, and there were a few cases where I had your email which I was so grateful for and I would say hey, doug, this is the case I'm having right now. This is what I'm thinking of and how I'm thinking of fitting this patient. What are your thoughts, because I never wanted to ask you. So, doug, what should I do? Right?

Blaise M. Delfino, M.S. - HIS: 29:20

I don't put any thought into it and 10 times out of 10, that specific patient case was the correct answer, was the correct course of action. So I consider you not only a mentor, now a friend. I've been so lucky, so grateful. But tell me about your mentors. Who are they and why are they so important in audiology?

Dr. Douglas L. Beck: 29:46

Yeah, well, thanks, blais, that's kind of you to say. I have a lot of mentors, the people that I learned the most from about clinical science audiology, hearing aids, auditory processing, neurology, interoperative monitoring. That's a really long list. I'll name four or five, but I feel bad because I won't be able to name all right, but certainly Jack Katz, huge mentor forming the way that I think through audiology diagnostics and rehab.

Dr. Douglas L. Beck: 30:15

Dr Brackman at the House of your Institute. Dr Brackman's now, I think, quasi retired. I'm going to hear from him if he's not. I spent so much time in operating rooms with Dr Brackman, one of the world's foremost neuratologists. He and Dr William F House, dr Bill House. Bill is the one who brought forward pretty much cochlear implants for the world. All of the early stuff I did at the House of your Institute, in the operating room and with cochlear implants was because of Bill House and the team of scientists we had arranged not we meaning me, but that I was lucky enough to be among. And so Bill House for sure, one of the most creative neuratologists in the history of the world. He invented the translabyrinthine cradionopathy. He invented the middle FASA approach to the skull. He was the first guy that ever used an operating microscope in the US.

Blaise M. Delfino, M.S. - HIS: 31:06

Pretty impressive If you can, and maybe we do an entire episode on that, but your experience in the operating room with that specific invention what was that?

Dr. Douglas L. Beck: 31:17

like. It was amazing because back in the day when I first got into the operating room during skull base and mastoid surgery, if you were monitoring cranial nerves you would you'd have to look over the surgeon's shoulder and or you could look through this tube and get a monocular vision, so you didn't have depth perception. That sidearm to the microscope was invented by Jack Urban and Bill House. Bill House was a dentist before he was a neuratologist and he tells these amazing stories that in the early days of dentistry, when he was a dentist and I want to say this was the early 50s, late 40s he was the first person that ever reclined a patient in a dental chair. Yeah, that no, because back in those days, the dentist you'd be sitting in a regular chair. The dentist would get on their knees to work on your upper teeth.

Dr. Douglas L. Beck: 32:04

Bill is such a fascinating individual. I am honored to say one of the last interviews ever done with him was one that I did. I flew out to Oregon after he had retired and I think it was 2011. If you go to DouglasLBECcom you can see my last interview with Dr William Miff House and just absolutely stunning.

Dr. Douglas L. Beck: 32:20

This man invented and created more things about audiology and otology than most of us know about and he was so audiology centric. He actually got a hearing and dispensing license. As you know, in California I don't know if it's true now, but back in the 80s physicians could dispense hearing aids if they chose to, and Bill chose to first take a course and make sure that he could pass the exam. And so he was mentored by me and especially by Donna Esquit and one or two other people in the lab, and Bill would come down, like every Monday or Tuesday night at closing, four o'clock, five o'clock, and he would study with us for a couple hours about hearing aids. So when Bill House started dispensing hearing aids which he rarely, if ever did, but he had qualified through the California exam to do that he didn't just say well, I'm a physician so I can do it. So I had incredible respect for him for doing that.

Blaise M. Delfino, M.S. - HIS: 33:13

Doug, the mentors you have and had, and just knowing you as a person, I'm sure your gratitude absolutely went a long way. So we have students that tune into the Hearing Matters podcast and we would encourage you find a mentor, because it really does help you throughout your career. You have a couple, two different, different point of views as well, doug. This has been an incredible, exciting episode. I am very much looking forward to the new and improved Hearing Matters podcast because our goal here is to not only help consumers but also professionals make educated hearing health care decisions. And we recently received an email from a new listener and they had emailed us about their hearing journey, and I'll read the first sentence. It said I recently found your podcast and I just love it.

Blaise M. Delfino, M.S. - HIS: 34:13

I'm a longtime hearing aid wearer who was in the market for new hearing aids. They go on to say that I get told quote that's a hard hearing situation. Your hearing system is damaged and cannot expect it to be fixed, like wearing glasses, end quote. Then this individual sent a follow up email because, of course, we responded and they had said that for the years that they've been wearing hearing aids, they never got really a measurement. So, doug, again, our goal is to help consumers and professionals make these educated decisions. How can this patient and this listener I'm sure there's many more of them how can they vouch for themselves when they're going into the clinic, whether they're a new patient or current hearing aid user, asking about best practices and why that's important? How should we sort of angle the conversation here?

Dr. Douglas L. Beck: 35:05

Yeah, it's a difficult conversation for a patient to have because you don't want to put your provider on the spot, that's one thing and the providers.

Dr. Douglas L. Beck: 35:15

I've heard people say oh yeah, I do my best practices, meaning they do what they think is best. And you have to be careful there, because that's not the same as the American Academy of Audiology best practices or the American Speech Language Hearing Association best practices or the International Hearing Society best practices. If I were a consumer looking for hearing healthcare, I think I would be bold enough to say, hey, I've been doing a lot of research. I want to make sure, whose best practices do you adhere to? And if they say, oh, I do mine, that's a little bit on the fence, because maybe their best practice incorporates the national guidelines, maybe it doesn't. I would be so bold and I would urge patients and consumers to be bold and say listen, I am a serious hearing healthcare candidate, I need some help. I've been doing my research online and I know that there are best practice models by AAA, by ASHA, by IHS. Do you follow those and, if so, which one?

Blaise M. Delfino, M.S. - HIS: 36:11

Doug, thank you for that and for any consumers out there any current hearing aid users, ci users any questions? Please feel free to send us an email at info at hearingmatterspodcastcom. You're tuned in to the Hearing Matters podcast, the show that discusses hearing technology, best practices and a growing global epidemic. On this episode, we spoke with our new co-host, dr Douglas Beck. Doug, thanks for joining us on the show. Until next time, hear life's story. Thank you, blaze.

Dr. Douglas L. Beck: 36:45

Looking forward to it.