NCHA member update – 28 August
Latest news:
- Fitness to practise: ‘swifter, fairer and less adversarial’
- Spotting sensory loss in dementia patients
- Care England piece about poor hearing care in homes
- FDA approves Samsung hearing aid feature in US
- Scottish audiology programme shortlisted for award
- Diagnostic waiting times
- The joy of clear ears
- Ears to the ground
- Health policy
Fitness to practise: ‘swifter, fairer and less adversarial’
In a blog for Clarity, Rajan Verma, the NCHA’s insurance and membership officer, addresses concerns raised in this year’s Professional Standards Authority (PSA) report regarding the HCPC fitness to practise process.
The PSA found this year that the HCPC failed two standards on fitness to practise procedures, taking too long to process cases and communicating inconsistently and poorly with individuals experiencing distress. Read more.
Spotting sensory loss in dementia patients
Clarity has published part two of a three-part series on the importance of embedding sensory checks in the management of patients with dementia. The author talks to an eye-care specialist about how easily signs of hearing and vision loss in a patient with dementia can be missed.
NICE guidance on hearing loss in adults clearly states that hearing loss and cognitive impairment are common comorbidities, although the evidence for a causal link between them remains weak.
Kamran Saha, a consultant ophthalmic surgeon at Moorfields Eye Hospital, explains that the best outcomes for patients with dementia include regular hearing and sight tests. He offers his expert advice to clinicians and carers and argues that behavioural hearing assessments are much easier to perform in the earlier stages of dementia.
Read more in Clarity.
Care England piece about poor hearing care in homes
The ‘Small Changes, Big Difference’ campaign, developed in partnership with Care England and Engage, found that while 90% of care home residents experienced hearing loss, it remained overlooked in everyday care.
Care home staff admitted that they had no training in how to manage hearing loss or maintain hearing aids, with one nurse admitting to ‘winging it’ and hoping for the best.
Read more in Clarity.
FDA approves Samsung hearing aid feature in US
Samsung’s Galaxy Buds have become the latest earbuds to receive FDA approval in the USA for their hearing test and amplification features. This allows them to be sold as over-the-counter hearing aids for mild to moderate hearing losses.
The move follows the FDA’s approval of Apple’s hearing aid feature in its AirPods Pro 2 earbuds in the US in 2024. The FDA first allowed the sale of OTC hearing aids in 2022, ending the requirement that people see an audiologist for a medical test and prescription.
Read more in Clarity.
Scottish audiology programme shortlisted for award
A programme in Scotland that prevents hearing loss in newborns requiring antibiotic treatment has been shortlisted for the Acute Sector Innovation of the Year at the 2026 Health Service Journal (HSJ) Awards.
Its Neonatal Gentamicin Point of Care Testing programme is the first nationally co-ordinated bedside prescribing pathway in acute neonatal care. It uses a rapid genetic test to identify babies at risk of permanent hearing loss before treatment with ototoxic antibiotics begins.
Some 41% of patients referred for an NHS audiology assessment were waiting six weeks or more in June, a slight decrease from the previous year and the previous month. This slight decrease occurred despite a 6% rise in audiology activity over the same period. The operational target is for fewer than 1% of patients to wait six weeks or more.
The latest figures from NHS England show that 1,924,600 patients were waiting for a key diagnostic test at the end of June 2026. This is an increase of 191,500 from June 2025.
The BBC reports on two former midwives who spotted a gap in the market after the NHS stopped commissioning earwax removal from GPs. They have set up a CQC-regulated private service including weekly clinics operating from a health centre in Wiltshire.
Kirsten said: “Emma and I were both midwives and we get as much job satisfaction giving [patients’] their hearing back as we did delivering their babies.”
- The BSA is looking for volunteers to join its professional guidance group to co-ordinate production of its documents and procedures. Find out more.
- BSHAA has welcomed the agreement of the Joint Audiology Leadership Group’s (JALG) Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) and Terms of Reference (ToR).
- ENT specialists, audiologists and other hearing care professionals can now book this year’s short training courses at the UCL Ear Institute. Read more.
- An NHS England healthcare science webinar on research, part of a series open to all healthcare science professions, will take place on 28 October. Register here.
- Phonak has launched Eon, which brings together two AI systems working in parallel to make hearing more adaptive, the Hearing Journal reports.
- A new study on how elephants communicate shows that their ears may reveal how they talk to each other over such long distances. Read more.
- The BBC reports that a deaf patient received the wrong injection because of a misunderstanding due to a lack of available BSL information.
NHS staff report negative impact of excessive admin
More than a quarter of NHS staff spend more than one day a week doing administrative work, according to new research commissioned by NHS Shared Business Services. Across the whole NHS workforce, this adds up to around 430 million hours each year, or the equivalent of 220,000 full-time roles.
More than 90% of NHS staff said they spent time each week dealing with inefficient or duplicated processes (92%) and IT system issues (92%). Among those affected, 87% reported at least one negative impact on their work or wellbeing. More than half (51%) said these challenges increased stress levels or contributed to burnout.
Read more in Clarity.