Always an Audiologist A peripatetic audiologist travels to remote regions of the world, providing hearing tests and treatments to underserved populations— and penning a children’s book, too. By Dawn Doig, Aud(C)
Dawn Doig in the mid-2000s in Saudi Arabia, one of several countries she’s lived in and practiced audiology.
34
hearing health
My father was born in Canada. An orphan, he spent time in a foster home as a child. When I was growing up, my family got to know his foster family very well, and even called his foster mother Grandma. In this family there were two grandchildren who were deaf, who married spouses who were also deaf, but they all had typical hearing children. I watched in fascination as the young hearing children who could barely speak signed with their parents. I had no idea what audiology was at the time, and little did I know that the seed had been planted for my future career. After earning a master’s in audiology (and my husband Bruce earned a dual degree in art history and education), we moved to Peace River, Alberta, with our 2-year-old daughter. For the next four years, I was the sole audiologist for 40,000 people. This was one of the greatest periods of growth for me as an audiologist, and I carried with me around the globe the invaluable experience I gained during this time. As a young clinician I needed to hone my audiology skills even though there was no one hhf.org
nearby to assist me. An introvert by nature, I had to become an advocate for my patients as well as the audiology program. One critical thing I learned was the importance of thoroughly understanding your testing equipment—how to troubleshoot and knowing when it may be malfunctioning. For instance, I noticed power surges to the clinic affected the equipment, and it was unnerving wondering if subsequent hearing tests might be inaccurate. Rural Canada was also the first place I realized that a population could be largely unaware of the issues surrounding hearing loss. Many of the patients I saw were older men who were lifelong farmers with noiseinduced hearing loss from farming practices and hunting. But a teenage boy I tested had the hearing loss of a much older patient and admitted he blasted his stereo in his car. When I pointed out the danger of losing his hearing permanently, he said he’d just get a louder boombox. At this time, the audiology field did not have the ability to test otoacoustic emissions or
