Cleaning Receiver in the Canal (RIC) Hearing aids

hi my name is Julia thanks for watching active audiologist video on how to manage a speaker in the ear hearing aid so this is an example of a speaker in the ear hearing aid you can see you've got a small part this is the part that goes behind your ear and then there's a very thin wire with a rubber tip that sits inside your ear these devices are really great because they can you have a nice small size but still give you a fantastic sound quality but they are sitting in a moist waxy environment being your ear so you do need to take care of them to keep them in good working order so the first thing I'll show you is just how to manage these parts sitting behind your ear now we recommend cleaning them at least two to three times a week but the manufacturer actually says to clean and after every use so that's best practice really these two little holes here are the microphones and that might not be the same on every model but you do need to keep those clean and you can keep them clean just by giving it a wipe down with a tissue all around so give it a wipe down with the dry tissue or just grab a little brush that comes with the device and just brush over the top there to get off any dust that might have collected the other part that's really important is this tip that's going inside the ear so this little rubber thing is called a dome and that's the part that's holding it into the ear canal you can keep that clean by giving it a wipe down as well all around and getting off any wax that you might find now sometimes the hearing aid might stop working and you're not really sure why and it can be just because a little bit of wax has gotten into that hole at the end and that's where the sounds coming out from so if that's blocked you're not going to hear anything this little cleaning tool has the brush on one end and a little wire on the other end now you can use that to just pick out any wax you might see or give it a bit of a brush now if that doesn't work the next step is to actually take off the dome and you do that just by pulling it off there we are so we've taken that little umbrella dome off and now you can see the speaker part of the device there's a little white circle on the tip there and that's actually a wax guard and it's there to stop the ear wax from getting further in and causing the hearing aid to stop working so if it's not working at all or it's been a few months since you've changed it it's a good idea to change this little wax guide and get that good sound quality back so most of these devices will come with a little pocket like this this is just one particular brand and if you just ask for a wax top or a wax guard it will be some variation of this so you just open up that packet and there's a full packet there and you actually just click that open from here and you can see what looks like little matchsticks sitting there each one of those has a replacement on it let's just put that there so you've got your replacement wax guide is that little white thing on that end and the other end is the tool to help you to remove the old one so what you do is you get that little stick and you push it straight in and pull out the old one okay we get rid of that take that away and then you can see now you've got your replacement here so it's the same thing you just push it straight in and in it goes now you don't go on an angle like that or anything like that you just push straight in and out and then hopefully after that it should be in working order and then what you do is grab your dome now you can get a new one out of the packet if you couldn't get that nice and clean so let's pretend that's a new one and then you just push it in to the little hole we and that's it where you go so if you've tried all these steps you've tried everything you can't get it going of course come in to see us or if you have any trouble along the way and we'll be more than happy to help you with this thanks for watching

Channel: Active Audiology

Views: 103,451

Rating: 4.5389829 out of 5

Keywords: receive in the ear hearing aids, RIC hearing aids, clean hearing aids, hearing aids

Id: DRFNi78so7o

Length: 5min 5sec (305 seconds)

Published: Mon Mar 02 2015