Last year, we asked our Cochlear™ recipients about their favorite hearing resources for rehabilitation, and 945 of you answered. You told us what has helped you the most in your hearing rehabilitation journey. You also shared which resources you like the most, why you like them, and how often you use them. Thank you! Since you shared with us, we’d like to share with you too. Check out this list of your top five favorite hearing resources for practicing your listening from 2023.
In 2023, we set out to find out which hearing rehabilitation resources are your favorite, and why. We asked questions on our website and sent a survey to ask you what resources you used to practice your listening. But we didn’t want to keep these great resources to ourselves. We wanted to share with you which hearing resources are the most-loved by your fellow hearing implant recipients. Here’s what we learned.
5. Our Rehabilitation Resources website
Among those of you who answered our questions, most of you (81%) were aware of the great resources we offer on the Cochlear website for hearing rehabilitation. Those resources include a variety of listening practice activities for everyone from babies, toddlers and school-aged children to teens and adults. In particular, the Telephone with Confidence resource was especially well-loved: 91% of you agreed that after using Telephone with Confidence, you felt more confident in your hearing or about the same. And for those who had used the resources on our website, 96% of you agreed that the resources were very helpful or somewhat helpful. About the resources on the website, one anonymous recipient said, “It’s easy to see a variety of types of exercises and select those which might be most helpful for me.”
4. The Hearing Rehabilitation Manual
The Hearing Rehabilitation Manual is an activity book of listening exercises you can complete with a partner to practice your hearing. It can be found in your backpack when you get a new sound processor, and you can find the digital versions here in English, Spanish, and French. The Hearing Rehabilitation Manual was one of the best-loved resources of 2023. Among those of you who used the manual, 94% of you said it was very helpful or somewhat helpful. And 96% of you said it helped you feel more confident in your hearing, or about the same. You said the most helpful features were that it was easily accessible from where you live and didn’t take too much time to complete the exercises.
3. Cochlear Recipient Solutions
The Cochlear Recipient Solutions program features virtual learning sessions for newly implanted recipients, and you all found it to be a great educational resource in 2023. Among those of you who had used the resource, 89% of you found it very helpful or somewhat helpful, and 93% of you left the session feeling more confident in your hearing or about the same. The things you reported liking the most about a virtual meeting with the Recipient Solutions team were that it was easily accessible from where you live, interesting and engaging, and that you felt confident your hearing outcomes would be better. But the place where you really expressed your appreciation for this program was in your anonymous comments. Many recipients called out their Recipient Solutions Manager by name! They were described as “a gold-star resource,” and “always knowledgeable and able to help me solve an issue.”
2. The Cochlear CoPilot™ mobile app
A mobile app available on Apple® devices, Cochlear CoPilot1 offers a variety of listening exercises, “skill builder” activities for developing your hearing skills, and practical tips and advice. This resource got great feedback from our recipients. Among those of you who had used CoPilot, 93% agreed it was very helpful or somewhat helpful. It was also the resource you reported using most often. In fact, 70% of you said you use the CoPilot app at least weekly, and 30% of you said you used it every single day. You loved that you could complete the activities by yourself without the help of a practice partner, that it was easily accessible, and that you enjoyed doing it. You also shared some great anonymous comments about your experience with CoPilot. One recipient shared, “I thoroughly enjoyed every one of the listening exercises in the CoPilot. I did all of them and did at least one every day for ~ 4 months. It totally helped my best hearing outcome in a positive way.” Another recipient shared, “Using Cochlear Copilot has helped me the most,” while a third said the most helpful thing was “Doing CoPilot every morning when I walk.”
1. Wearing your sound processor all the time
The Cochlear hearing resource our recipients loved the most in 2023 wasn’t a resource at all – it was wearing your sound processor(s) full-time. Among the recipients who responded to our questions, 78% reported that they wear their sound processor more than 10 hours per day, with another 16% saying they wear it for 7 to 9 hours per day. And those who reported wearing their processor 10+ hours per day also reported making more progress with their hearing, with a significantly higher portion saying they had made “a lot of progress” with their hearing and far fewer recipients reporting they’ve made “not much progress.”
But the most impressive measure of how much you all loved wearing your sound processor all the time was when we asked you all a simple, open-ended question: “In your own words, what do you think has helped you make the most progress with your hearing so far?” Your answers were loud and clear. More than any other answer, 27% of you declared that the most helpful thing for you had been maximizing your time wearing your sound processor. Among the anonymous answers we received, a few stood out. One recipient shared that what had helped them make the most progress with their hearing was “Wearing the device as much as possible each day. I usually put it on after my morning shower and only take it off for activities that may cause it to fall off. It’s important to get through the discomfort of some sounds until you get used to it. Also trying different programs to learn what works best.” We got dozens of additional responses, including “wearing the processor at least 16 hours a day,” “wearing it constantly,” and “just keeping it on – all day every day.”
And so, our recipients have spoken! These five resources were the ones recipients said were their favorite ways to practice their listening in 2023. Looking for the best place to get started? Visit our Rehabilitation Resources website to learn about these hearing resources, and more.
