Diagnostic Audiology Program

The Experience

Boston Children's Hospital is a world-renowned pediatric tertiary care medical center and is a Harvard Medical School teaching hospital.

The Diagnostic Audiology program at Boston Children's Hospital has mentored externs and fellows continuously since the early 1990s. Past externs are now working at other pediatric hospitals around the country, working for manufacturers, and have obtained their PhD in Audiology/Hearing Science. The Director of Diagnostic Audiology is also a past extern of this program (2001-2002).

Audiology Externs at Boston Children's Hospital are also enrolled in the LEND Fellowship (Leadership Education in Neurodevelopmental Disabilities) at the Institute for Community Inclusion. This leadership training is typically one day per week (Fridays) from September to April and involves social policy and public health. See http://www.communityinclusion.org/project for details.

This externship is not a paid position, as this presents conflict-of-interest between the trainee-trainer relationship and suggests a lack of need for supervision and teaching. Such defeats the purpose of an externship, which is intended to bring a student from near-independence to full independence across the range of pediatric audiology service. The position typically is provided a stipend to help offset the cost of living in Boston.

Our patients come from all walks-of-life, local as well as international, typically-developing children to very medically complex neonates.

Externs are provided with supervision by a range of experienced pediatric audiologists. All staff have either ASHA CCC-A or ABA Board Certification in Audiology in addition to the state license in audiology. Many staff have the ABA Pediatric Audiology Specialty Certificate, Cochlear Implant Specialty Certificate, or both. Supervision from an audiologist with the ASHA CCC-A is available but not guaranteed. While ASHA cannot require academic programs to send externs/students only to preceptors who have the ASHA CCC-A, some universities have interpreted the requirements of ASHA's Council for Academic Accreditation as such. Please check with your academic advisor for details about the specific requirements of your program.

It is expected that externs will rotate between the Diagnostic Audiology program, Habilitative Audiology program, and the Pediatric Balance Center during the 11-12 month experience. Externs will be exposed to all aspects of pediatric audiological evaluation and case management, including all behavioral audiometry techniques and electrophysiology (including frequency-specific threshold estimation by ABR). Externs may participate in hearing aid fittings, FM system selection and participation in determining educational accommodations for children with hearing loss. Cochlear implant mapping is a component of the rotation through the Habilitative Audiology Program as well as determining specific education accommodations in the Sound Outreach to Schools educational audiology service (part of Habilitative Audiology). A rotation through the Pediatric Balance Center at Boston Children's Hospital is also expected, where the extern develops skills in conducting VNG, Platform Posturography, and electrophysiology (including c-VEMP) in a pediatric population. It is expected that upon completion of training, the extern will be competent to provide detailed assessment and audiologic case management of complex pediatric patients.