A Survey of Educational Environment for the Accreditation of Audiology and Hearing Sciences Education

Abstract

Audiologists are in a unique position to work with people who have hearing loss or any ear-related problems such as balance and tinnitus. The audiologists evaluate the hearing status, interpret the results, and plan the audiologic care and rehabilitation services. Due to a wide range of works as a professional, one of the most important roles of Audiology departments is to educate and train students to work as future professional audiologists. Given no establishment of accreditation of Audiology departments in Korea, a survey of academic and clinical education environments is a key starting point to discuss across departments for the process of the departmental accreditation. In the present study, a survey was conducted to obtain information about fourteen programs of academic and clinical environments offering the graduate or undergraduate degrees in the Audiology and Hearing Sciences. Aspects of core academic and clinical courses, environments of clinical education, information on professors and students were surveyed in this study. Results showed that most departments had the similar core courses. However, the departments varied in terms of clinical courses and facilities, and faculty members. Some strengths and weaknesses of each Audiology department were idetnfiied. Most of faculty agreed that the quality of education would be improved by developing endorsement for accreditation criteria and a common set of acceptable standards for universities. This would assure consistency across departments, education quality, better clinical and practical environments. The accreditation of audigology departments will promote the status of audiologists and hearing scientists in Korea, resulting in a high-quality audiological hearing services for the hearing-impaired. Future studies should be based on a regular monitoring of the departmental education.