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A brand new children’s audiology department is being created at St Helier Hospital, meaning that newborns who need their very first hearing check and children who require investigations and treatment will soon be seen in a fresh new environment, stocked full of state-of-the-art equipment. 

The new unit, which will cost £400,000 to build, will be housed in Queen Mary’s Hospital for Children (which is on the St Helier site) and will include one observation room, two specialist treatment rooms and one room dedicated to fitting young people with hearing aids. It will also include a new reception and waiting area.

Nicola Charlton, the lead audiologist for the service, said: “The whole team is incredibly excited about the new department, and we just can’t wait to be able to provide care for our younger patients in this wonderful new facility.

“We already offer a high level of care to babies and children in our general audiology department, but we are delighted to be able to create a new unit that is absolutely dedicated to paediatric care. We are there for our young patients every step of the way, and this new unit will mean that we can tailor our services to our patient’s needs.”

The new unit will include a specialist treatment room for newborn hearing screening. Known as automated brain stem response testing, the procedure assesses the pathway from the hearing organ to the brain, and can identify hearing loss whether it’s mild or profound. The second specialist treatment room will be used to identify hearing loss in infants (who are still too young to explain what they can and can’t hear) with a test called visual reinforced audiometry. During the assessment, hearing experts use visual displays and sounds to assess hearing – so for example, displaying a cartoon picture with a sound to encourage the child to look to the source of the noise.

Both these rooms will be fully sound proofed and fitted with an observation window so that clinicians can watch what happens without distracting the child.  And with updated equipment throughout the unit, staff will be able to assess every aspect of a child’s hearing and help to overcome any hearing loss.