Washington Society of Audiology

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Letter From The President
Welcome members to another exciting year for the Washington Society of Audiology. WSA consists of Audiologists from a wide variety of specialties that can come together in a forum of positive learning and problem solving to assist one another in the many challenges we face as professionals. We face legislative issues, ethical concerns, community service responsibilities and most importantly a responsibility to deliver a superior level of care to our patients. Our goal is to raise awareness about our profession to give our patients and our communities a greater faith in our expertise and qualifications.

As times change and the baby boomers face various aspects of aging, they look for and often times scrutinize the area of healthcare in which they need assistance. In other words they are smart consumers who have a greater involvement in their own healthcare experience. They will be looking for you and demanding a higher level of professionalism, a higher standard of service excellence, and they will be evaluating your educational expertise compared with your competitors.

It is our job as audiologists to examine our own strengths and weaknesses. We need to capitalize on our strengths and we must seek more education and mentoring in the areas we feel are our weakest. If we each take responsibility and work together, we can elevate our profession above other professions and set an example of superior quality of care. The Au.D. has allowed us more credibility. So it is my belief that the job of WSA is to further promote the field of Audiology by creating a dialogue for teaching, learning and sharing our experiences; all of which can aid us in our quest to receive (and even demand) more respect from physicians, speech-language pathologists and other professionals. We must head our own public relations campaign!

I have the privilege of being this years President among a group of very intelligent board members for the 2006-2007 year. We want you to get excited about both WSA and about your profession. We are looking forward to serving you and are working to provide education in an area in which it is very difficult to receive an formal training, yet it is an area where we face some of our most difficult challenges each day: Ethics. With reimbursements continually being reduced and having more requirements for documentation, we are being faced with decreasing profit margins. We are also find ourselves forced into participation in buying groups to keep up with those associated costs which changes the way we provide services and bill for those services. In turn we feel a great sense of burn out at times. These concerns are part of the everyday facts of being an Audiologist, even for those who have great passion and find great joy in their work. We hope to help by providing you with an ethics course for the spring meeting. We have not yet finalized a speaker, so if you know of someone that you feel is qualified lead this discussion in an inspirational way please contact one of your board members.

For our Summer dinner, we are considering having a panel of private practice audiologists who wish to share their experiences both positive and negative. This panel will focus on the steps necessary to begin a private practice and also share in what each feels is necessary to maintain a successful practice. We are hoping to have representation by those of you who have recently started a private practice and also those who have been running a practice for quite some time. The requirements and expenses have likely changed through the years and we feel this will provide a worthwhile discussion for all who attend. This will benefit those looking to start a private practice and also for those working in a private practice or even a clinical setting who would like to make changes to support the success of the setting they are part of.

We also face some not-so-pleasant business financially with our Labor & Industries lawsuit that warrants discussion. We are faced with debt remaining for our lobbyist, Ms. Melissa Johnson, who has not yet been paid in full for her representation of both Audiologists and Hearing Instrument Specialists in this suit. There has been some discussion that there were many people who pledged funds to help the Labor and Industries lawsuit, however they did not follow through with those payment pledges. Therefore we need to participate in the resolution of the matter so as not to tarnish our profession. If we decline paying our lobbyist on this issue, we will be hard pressed to find someone to graciously represent us down the road on other important issues..and Im sure there will be more. So please contact our treasurer, Jayna Williams- Coluccio, if you are interested in donating money to the cause. We are planning on paying $1000.00 of our WSA funds to help reduce the debt since we have these funds available. The allocation of funds is based upon what the board agrees is important for the current year. We plan to pay down the debt until it is paid in full and we hope that as members you agree with our decision to do this.

As a final thought, as your President, I urge each one of you to consider the importance of getting involved in your organizations, both locally and at the national level. There are many positions that require our time, time that unfortunately takes away from our precious families. I am, however, here to say that it is time well spent and should be considered by all of us. So I encouraged you all to take a look at your schedules, as busy as they are, and determine what you can do help promote your profession. We will be looking for people to fill board member positions for next year and other smaller roles such as CEU coordinator, web site manager, and an elections officer, which are all open for next year. Get involved, we would love to see you! Have a wonderful year!

From Your Humble President,

Joy Nilsson, Au.D., CCC-A
Doctor of Audiology