Tinnitus Tools To Help With Your Tinnitus Consultations

At the moment, the only ways to measure how bad tinnitus is and how it affects a person are through fairly subjective audiometric tests, questionnaires, and clinical conversations with patients. Here, we're making available the digital forms and questionnaires that we use in our own hearing centre consultations.

1. The Tinnitus Patient Intake Form is to help you find as much about the person's tinnitus in a conversational way that allows you to take digital notes and the patient to feel listened to.
2. The Tinnitus Audiometry Assessment includes pitch and loudness matching, minimum masking level and the residual inhibition test including the descriptions of how to perform each test.
3. The Tinnitus Handicap Inventory is a 25-item self-report assessment used to assess the severity of tinnitus handicap. The THI is a useful measure for determining the efficacy of psychological treatment for tinnitus and for measuring clinical change.

Many questionnaires about tinnitus have been made, and we have thought about how well each one works in the clinic and how well it shows clinical change. The questionnaires and forms we've made available are from our own personal selection. They vary in terms of the areas and details that they cover, and there are many others available.

Along with the usual medical history, physical exam, and hearing test, many clinicians also complete psychometric questionnaires for their patients. Questionnaires can be specifically related to tinnitus and hearing in order to evaluate tinnitus annoyance, distress, and severity. Other questionnaires can be used to measure general depression, anxiety, quality of life, and insomnia. By learning more about the patient's symptoms, clinicians can create a treatment plan that will improve the patient's overall quality of life and make tinnitus less stressful.

A referral path is also important because the clinician isn't always the person who will continue the patient's care.