Husker members of the Student Academy of Audiology at the University of Nebraska–Lincoln are partnering with assisted living facilities around Lincoln to provide hearing aid care and cleaning training for nursing staff.
“In the past, we’ve gone and cleaned hearing aids at different facilities,” said Lauren Paben, a second-year student in the Clinical Doctorate in Audiology program and academy volunteer chair. “That was great, but we realized there was a need for the nursing staff to know the basic care and maintenance.”
The students noticed people who may just need a new battery or wax cleaned out of their hearing aids were going without because they didn’t know the problem was so minor. Their hope is that providing education and training to nursing staffs will help resolve those simple issues more quickly.
“We saw this need that it was great to go clean hearing aids, but we can make a bigger impact if we can teach the nursing staffs at a bunch of different facilities the basic things they can do if a hearing aid isn’t working,” Paben said. “Hearing aid problems such as a dead battery or hearing aids that are clogged with wax can often be fixed in a matter of minutes right at the facility, so they won’t need to go to their audiologist. A lot of people don’t have that information, so we want to share that.”
The project got started with students providing training and educational materials for two shifts of nursing staff at Gateway Vista in late November. They are hoping to complete trainings at other facilities around Lincoln throughout the remainder of the 2025-26 academic year.
For more information or to schedule a training, send email to lpaben2@huskers.unl.edu.
