My marketing team asked our new Sydney audiologist five questions for his staff profile on our website. His answers were so good I’d like to share them with you.

Meet Ryan O’Clair, all the way from America!

How did you get into the field of hearing?

Short answer: I fell in love!

Long answer: While completing my coursework in as many physiology of psychology, and neuroscience classes I could take, the opportunity to further study the auditory pathway led me to an introductory class entitled ‘Basics of Audiology.’ It was an intensive class taught by a tough professor and from day one I was hooked! I realised that this was material I not only wanted to learn, I wanted to internalise.

The professor noted my enthusiasm, became my mentor, and encouraged me to pursue a doctorate degree in audiology at a brand new program at Pacific University.

There I had the opportunity to travel the U.S. visiting research facilities, various manufacturer plants, and to work in diverse clinical settings alongside gifted audiologists.

In truth I’ve always been and continue to be enamoured with sound.

Why is hearing health so important?

Our sense of hearing is one of the pivotal ways we connect with the world around us. If that fundamental building block of the human experience begins to deteriorate, a whole cavalcade of unexpected consequences begins to arise.

We begin to pull away, we stop participating, we withdrawal and gradually, often without even realising it, we allow the loss to negatively impact our lives. And not just our lives but our entire family’s lives. And that’s not okay.

Especially as there is an ever growing body of evidence-based research that indicates hearing loss is not harmless.

What’s the most rewarding aspect of your job?

Metaphorically helping an individual turn on the light in the dark.

There’s often an ‘Ah ha!’ moment, like an illuminated flashbulb brightening when an individual goes from not hearing to hearing aspects of sound.

The experience of hearing, when you think about it, is miraculous… It’s an incredibly rewarding experience to see such a drastic, positive and immediate change in a person’s life.

Those are the moments that count. And that’s the whole purpose of this career, to help people hear and reevaluate their own relationships with sound.

What’s the most important thing we should all know about hearing and our ears?

Hint: It’s what’s between our ears!

Hearing loss is invisible, independent of age, often gradually occurs, and is not necessarily a natural progression in life. However, the most important thing we should all know is that healthy hearing goes beyond our ears…ultimately we hear with the most complex/fascinating organ in the known universe, the human brain!

The ear and the auditory pathway is just that, it’s a pathway to the final way station located between our ears. If aspects along the pathway become damaged or disrupted, then the entire signal can become comprised. After years of neglect, that degraded signal can have unexpected and negative consequences on the entire system as a whole. Essentially hearing loss needs to be treated to preserve the system as a whole! ‘Use it or lose it,’ is not just a phrase, it’s a very real physiological effect that can have unexpected consequences on the brain itself.

Take away message: Protect your ears, get a hearing test and create a baseline.

What would you be doing if you weren’t an audiologist?

If we woke up tomorrow and a cure for hearing loss had been created, I’d celebrate with the world, and then perhaps carve out a career as an acoustic ecologist. Noise pollution is a reality, and its effects on us and our environment should not be ignored. I imagine I’d focus on that aspect of life, and work toward creating healthier ‘soundscapes’ for both our urban and natural environments. Or perhaps, reinvent myself as a composer?