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Developing a New Curriculum in the field of Audiological Rehabilitation For Occupational Groups
Start date: Sep 1, 2015, End date: Aug 31, 2017 PROJECT  FINISHED 

The main objective of this project is to develop a new curriculum in the field of Audiological Rehabilitation in order to increase the vocational skills of ENT doctors (Ear-Nose-Throat), Family Doctors, Audiologists, Nurses, Audiometricians, Hearing Aid Sales Representatives and other medical staff working on this field. It’s aimed to increase vocational skills, strengthen the self-improvement and the employment rate of the ENT Doctors, Family Doctors, Audiologists, Nurses, Audiometricians, Hearing Aid Sales Representatives and other medical staff working on this field even without considering their age and education background. By year of 2015, it is estimated that there are approximately 1.1 billion people having hearing loss in the world. Lots of studies in this field shows that 65 percent of these people have low level hearing loss, 30 percent have middle level hearing loss and 5 percent have advanced level of hearing loss. In Sweden it is notified that 14 percent of population of adults over 18 years old have hearing loss. All over the world, the 80 percent of people using hearing aid are geriatric patients over 65 years old. According to Turkey Statistics Institute January 2015 data population of Turkey is 78.152000 and 8.2 percent of the population is over 65 years old. Although number of geriatric patients having hearing aid is high, according to data of Association of Hearing Aid Dealers and Association of Hearing Aid Manufacturers, only 20 percent of these patients buy hearing aids and a few of them use the hearing aid regularly. The low rate usage of hearing aid in Turkey is caused by the absence of formal education and curriculum in occupational groups relevant to hearing aids Education curriculum. The similar curriculum studies, like the one that is planned to be produced by this project, have been applied successfully in the field of different health disciplines for instance in diabetics. With the studies that are planned in this Project, we, with our European Partners, aim to increase the vocational skills of persons who works in the field of audiology that directly relates with the 10% of society. In this way, it’s also targeted to prevent the functional and psychosocial disabilities, which is raised by hearing loss, of the society. Although the necessary criteria for selecting the appropriate hearing aid is declared, in Turkey, there is no study performed on the usage and benefits of the hearing aids. Also, there is no implementation of hearing aids in the hospitals. The only implementations are performed in the hearing aid dealer centers. The point to consider is that there isn’t even any education and training curriculum applied in the universities or ministry of health hospitals in order to increase the vocational skills of these occupational groups. Therefore, with the planning studies in this Project, it’s aimed to create innovation approaches about vocational education, and to increase the dissemination of best practices in the field of audiological rehabilitation in Turkey and Europa. The Project will also effect and increase the usage ratio of hearing aid that is very low in Turkey and Europa. With the project, It’s intended to rehabilitate the psychosocial problems of elderly people which may occur because of hearing loss and to increase the quality of life, by developing solutions to each items that are mentioned above. As it's mentioned earlier, there is no curriculum related to Audiological Rehabilitation for occupational groups in Turkey. Therefore, it's essential to carry out such a partnership from different EU countries in order to evaluate the best practices applied in these countries and create such curriculums with the help of these expert partners. For the project partnership, there is 3 academic partners and 1 IT partner. The coordinator is Sense-Science Association and other partners are UMC Utrecht, UMB from Poland and Oran Teknoloji from Turkey. These partners are selected according to their expertise on the tasks and activities that they will perform in the project. During the project, the Steering Committee will be formed up from the partner organization in the lead of Sense-Science-Association. The Steering Committee is main responsible of the management and implementation of the project. The Committee will lead to form different control and monitor groups for tracking and evaluating the objectives and activities of the project. These groups are Academic, Dissemination, Quality, Finance and Budget Groups etc. All these groups will have direct responsibilities to the Committee. After the project has been performed, it's believed that a new curriculum and training methodology for the occupational groups will be created and integrated to the existing health and education system. By raising awareness on Audiological Rehabilitation, the low usage rate of hearing aids will increase and this will directly increase the cost-effectiveness of hearing aid sales.
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