AUDIOLOGY staff from University Hospitals Tees invited external organisations from across the region to offer support and advice to members of the public with hearing concerns, during October.
The open day, held at the One Life Centre in the centre of Hartlepool, took place on Wednesday 29 October, from 10am to 4pm.
The day included a colouring competition for children to get involved in, alongside hearing aid maintenance workshops, visual reinforcement audiometry (VRA) demonstrations, free hearing screenings and lots of advice and support from experts on hearing loss and other auditory disorders.
Audiology team lead, Sue Kitching said: “We knew that we wanted to organise an open day to ensure we were doing all we could to support our local community with their hearing-related concerns.
“We were all overwhelmed by how well attended our open day was. We managed to see over 120 members of the public with our hearing screening offer and were able to offer support and advice on topics such as hearing aid maintenance.
“We were also really pleased and have to say a big thank you to all the great external groups and organisations at hand to offer advice, support and information to our patients and members of the public.”



Feedback from a patient
“The audiology staff are all the bees knees – the workshop to find out how to retube my hearing aid was very helpful!”
Thank you to our external stakeholders
Among the external support groups and stakeholders invited to support the public open day were:
- National Deaf Children’s Society
 - Action Deafness Durham
 - Phonak
 - Sarabec
 - Deaf Empowering Network
 - Sensory Teaching Advisory and Resource service (STARS)
 - RNID
 - Hearing dogs