The NHS Fife Hearing Services team provides adult and child hearing services. These services offer specialist hearing assessment and follow up-fitting services. The team evaluates progress and supports the ongoing maintenance of NHS digital hearing aids.
Hearing difficulties are not always obvious. For example, children can have different degrees and types of hearing impairment. Although a child may respond to certain sounds around the home, they may not be able to hear everything, such as a key in a lock, creaking floorboards, or a door opening. Issues must be identified as early as possible to prevent any effect on a child's ability to develop good speech and language skills and to provide support and information to the child and their parent. All newborns in Scotland are offered a hearing screening test. If this test is clear it is unlikely there will be hearing loss that will significantly affect the development of speech and language.
In adults, hearing loss, or difficulty with hearing in noisy situations, can limit a person's social and work activities. Adults with hearing loss often first notice a problem when struggling to hear in group situations, in environments with a lot of background noise, or on the telephone. The adult audiology team aims to actively involve adults in decisions on managing their hearing loss to help improve quality of life.
