Carls Center Audiology Clinic provides drop off services for patients
Central Michigan University's Carls Center Audiology Clinic has created drop off services to safely assist patients during the COVID-19 pandemic.
The Carls Center is a rehabilitation center and student run clinic. The clinic is supervised by licensed audiologists, speech-language pathologists, psychologists, and physical therapists. They see patients for hearing evaluations, hearing aids, and assistive listening devices. They also see them for Cochlear implants and vestibular testing.
During the shut down, they were unable to see patients in the clinic.
Nicole Ferguson, director of clinical instruction for audiology services, said she had no idea how to move forward with providing services to their patients.
“We had this period where patients' hearing aids broke,” Ferguson said. “We had to develop a way that they could get their hearing aids to us.”
That’s when the clinic developed the drop off service. Patients are able to drop their hearing aid devices off into the drop off box in the back of the Health Professions Building for the clinic to fix. Although the services are not same day, the usually turn around is two days.
The drop off box is always accessible but pick-up is only. available Monday - Friday 8 a.m. to 4:30 p.m
“The students have to check them out and then we have to go behind them to make sure that all the steps are done correctly,” Ferguson said.
With the clinic partially reopen, they have to see less patients to allow for social distancing. The patients have to pre-screen before they can come to campus.
Although the drop off service was created to assist patients, someone who isn’t a patient can utilize it as well.
“If someone had hearing aids or another device from another clinic wanted to use it,” Ferguson said. “We could establish them as a new patient.”
