A vast number of seniors in the UK carry free NHS hearing aids and a high portion of those are Phonak Nathos Auto M. This article is about improving your hearing experience and speech understanding if you have a pair of Phonak Nathos Auto M provided by NHS in the UK.
The challenge
Steve lives in Oxfordshire. He is retired but actively supports local communities in and around Oxfordshire with group consultation and therapy sessions. The seating arrangement is circular. Steve too takes a seat in the circle. It gives a feeling of unity, safety and calmness. He starts the session by introducing the topic of the day and then attendees reflect on the topic with their own first-hand life experience.
Steve is in his 70s, and although fit and active he has a sloping binaural sensorineural high-frequency loss. "So you can imagine when attendees are soft-spoken and in particular females, I struggle to hear them fully and often have to ask the speaker to repeat themselves", Steve said. "This is annoying and unproductive, and also hammers my confidence in managing the session", he continued. So he called me to discuss his options.
The task
Steve wears a pair of free NHS hearing aids, to be more accurate a pair of Phonak Audeo Nathos Auto M. I fitted a lot of this type of hearing aids when I was working with Specsavers in London. He is overall happy with his NHS hearing aids. Steve is also on a budget, so he does not want to invest in private hearing aids. However, he wants to hear the attendees in the group therapy better so he can manage the session more effectively. He doesn't have a specific budget in mind but he wishes his spending "to be as low as possible".
About Phonak Audeo Nathos Auto M
Phonak Audeo Nathos Auto M is a behind-the-ear (BTE) hearing aid. They take size 13 batteries. This hearing aid is not Bluetooth enabled but it is capable of receiving T-Coil signals which often can be found in public places such as banks, museums and train stations. The hearing aid has
The code M is for Medium. We used to prescribe the SP model of Phonak Nathos for those with severe to profound hearing loss. Most M types are fitted on thin-tube, while the SP models are fitted with tube and earmould. It had two microphones hence capable of directionality in noisy spaces for a better speech understanding. It has a volume up and down switch, as well as a Program switch that can toggle through the preset programs.
Please see below for a short introduction video of Phonak Nathos Auto M.
Back to basics
Before considering any additional devices, there are other considerations for hearing better the speech in group therapy. Steve could consider the following steps that could improve his speech intelligibility in the therapy sessions:
Make sure that you have a recent hearing test done and that your hearing aids are adjusted to that hearing test. Your hearing may have dropped without you knowing and a readjustment might improve your hearing substantially.
Make sure that the audiologist does REM on your hearing aids. The REM would warrant the best performance of the hearing aid for the user's profile of hearing loss.
Ask your audiologist to set up a specific program for listening in a quiet and one for listening in a noisy environment and give the soft sounds additional gain. This would expand the sphere of amplification of the sound by the hearing aid. This step may need to be repeated until you are happy with the level of the sound you receive from the distant speaker. The volume control on Nathos Auto M could also be very handy. Remember that you need to choose that specific program at the sessions.
The solution - Roger remote microphones
Steve's challenge is down to, how to set up a remote microphone with Phonak Nathos Auto M. This would be even more relevant if the session of the therapy is being held in a noisy environment, with a background noise that could interfere with the distant soft-spoken speakers.
Most of the sound that hearing aids process is the sound in a sphere about a 1.0 to 1.5-meter radius around them. For Steve to hear the voice of the attendees 5 to 7 meters from him he needs to have a remote microphone closer to the speaker to gather the speech, process and then send it to his hearing aids, voila. And since he already uses Phonak hearing aids the best option is to consider Phonak Roger's family of assistive listening devices.
Phonak Roger devices mostly rely on Bluetooth to communicate with the hearing aids. They can be paired to any Phonak hearing aid that is Bluetooth enabled and seamlessly connect to them as soon as they are switched on, but Phonak Nathos Auto M is not Bluetooth enabled. Luckily it is Tele-Coil enabled.
An intermediary device called Phonak Neck-Loop is needed to bridge a Phonak Roger table microphone to Phonak Nathos Auto M. So in summary this is what Steve needs to be able to connect his Phonak Nathos to Roger remote microphones:
A Roger On iN V3 or a Phonak Roger Select iN table microphone
Another point that is worth mentioning here is that a Phonak NeckLoop could also bridge Phonak Nathos Auto M hearing aids to Phonak TV streamer which makes watching TV programs much more entertaining. It can also bridge your Nathos Auto M aids to your Bluetooth mobile phone.
To obtain the above equipment Steve might have a good chance to receive them at no cost through the Access to Work program.
Please feel free to leave your questions in the comment box below, or book a free telecare consultation if you need further assistance on this topic.
References
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