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Introduction Oooh, a new member!

Hi all! My name is Heather, and I am finally giving up my lurking ways. I'm about to start medicine at UWS- I've just enrolled, having deferred an offer from after completing my HSC in 2013 (I took two years to do the HSC though- 2012 and 2013), and so I'm very excited. I've got a few interesting questions to pose as I'm hard of hearing, so if there's anyone else around here in the same position, give me a shout! (seriously, I would absolutely love to hear from anyone else who is hearing impaired and doing/studying medicine)

And thus I run out of things to write, aside from perhaps the fact that I love reading and bushwalking, and should anyone care to hear about what I got up to in my gap year, I'll happily yak on about that for hours. Anyways, I happily await chatting with all you denizens of this board :)
 

Syn

Regular Member
Welcome! What'd you do on your gap year?!
 

gidget

Member
Hi, I'm at UWS. We have very new lecture theatres for med and they have hearing loop for hearing aids if that helps at all. They also record all lectures and post them online so you can listen to them again. I don't know what type or severity of hearing issues you have but tutorials are only 10ppl around a table. You will find the anatomy lab crowded and hard to hear the teacher (we all have that problem in there!) and on wards it will depend on your tutor. UWS tends to be really accommodating to anyone who needs extra provisions so talk to Penny :)
 
A friend of mine has a bit of hearing problem. This person sits at the front of lecture theatre and usually go home/res and listens to recordings online. Theres a "crying room" as they call it. For some reason we were asked by one of our lecturer not to sit there. May be because they knew we were going to talk although people outside can't hear you talking but this person gets distracted. The speaker in that room is loud and I think theres a hearing loop too. I'm sure you can use this room (make sure you speak to the year coordinator. I think its going to be Dr. Carl this time).

I agree with gidget, its hard to hear surgeons teaching us at the lab. Hopefully they will use mic from now.

Word of advice regarding anatomy lab. Pre-reading/studying before the anatomy lab make things easier for you. Passing won't be a problem if you study hard before the exam but you will be ahead of many if you know what you are looking for. And it makes other stuff easier too if you know your anatomy.

Regarding hospital visits, if its really hard for you then I think you should get an hearing aid, unless you already have one. Some geriatric patients may not be loud enough for you especially when you have nurses and other health professionals working in the same room. Plus you don't want to miss anything your ICM tutor say. Listening to them is important and the best thing is you learn real medicine that way.

Any question, feel free to ask. Hope to see you soon.
 
Thanks for the replies/advice, guys :) I do already have hearing aids, I got my first pair when I was three, and I've also been using other assistive devices like FMs all through my school years. One of the reasons I put UWS as my first preference was actually because of the high standard of disability services that UWS provides. My hearing is classified as mild-moderately severe, being worst in the speech ranges. So if you need someone to hear passing traffic, I'm your girl, but listening from a distance are unfortunately not my forte.

And I spent my gap year travelling around Australia, doing an insane amount of camping, climbing on tall things, taking photos, and generally having far too much fun for the amount of learning I was doing.
 
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