Children in Somerset are getting great audiology care, say inspectors

It’s a massive thumbs-up for the service that our team of audiologists at Musgrove Park Hospital provide to children and young people under their care.

The team recently hosted three experts from the audiology field for a day, as part of the National Paediatric Hearing Services Improvement Programme, which aims to check the quality and safety of audiology services across the country.

Somerset’s audiology service is made up of clinics at hospitals across Somerset, but most of the paediatric care takes place at Musgrove Park Hospital.

The team also provides paediatric hearing tests through Yeovil Hospital, which is currently run out of South Petherton Hospital while we wait for it to transfer across to the Yeovil Diagnostic Centre later in the year.

Our audiology service provides hearing assessments and rehabilitation for people of all ages, and the specialist paediatric part of the department offers this for those aged 0-18 years.

Laura Price, one of our clinical leads in paediatric audiology, says everyone in the team is proud with the feedback they got from the visit. “It was really reassuring for us to hear, because we believe that we are providing a safe service, but having external opinion to confirm that is incredibly important,” she says.

“Even though we did well, there’s lots more work to do and there are still improvements we need to make, so we’re continuing with our service development.

“Children are generally referred to us by their GP, health visitors or speech and language therapists, and for babies it’s through the newborn hearing screening service, where all newborns in the UK are offered a hearing screen – if they don’t pass, then they’re referred to us for a diagnostic hearing test.

“It’s really important, because if an infant is born with hearing loss then we need to know about it as soon as possible, as this allows us to discuss the various communication approaches and management options with parents, at the earliest stage to support the child’s development.

“Most colleagues in our team are audiologists, but we also have a brilliant admin team and assistant audiologists, and we work closely with our ENT colleagues, Newborn Hearing Screening Programme team, paediatrics, and teachers of the deaf – they’ve all contributed to this success!”

Tom Lister, our lead healthcare scientist, adds: “Colleagues in our paediatric audiology team work incredibly hard to provide an outstanding service for deaf and hearing-impaired children across Somerset.

“External assessment and peer review are important to provide assurance of their work, and it’s reassuring to see such positive comments from the regional assessors, who have invited the team to showcase some of their innovative work at regional meetings.

“We’re extremely proud of audiology manager Emma Ralph, paediatric clinical lead Paul Bowers and Laura, as well as the rest of our audiology team.”