This!
One thing that annoys me with āhow do you hear me now approachā is that they think we want to spend unlimited time in their quiet offices.
I have yet to see someone who follows best practices summarised by dr cliff and insists on using manufacturers audiometry as only equipment. You canāt follow best practices with HA alone!
If you have the equipment, use it!
If you donāt have, donāt tell us how it isnāt important /useful.
I donāt have time nor energy to ever again spend months to get something usable.
Rem gives me that with one setup.
And THEN I go out, take notes and complaints and start personalised fitting process.
@jlgreer1 sorry to hear that someone thought that only rem is the solution 
I mean, in quiet it works, for other situations other HA features had to be setup for you as well. Like amount of noise cancelling, directionality and so on.
I mean first thing after fit my fitter took paper tissue and rubbed it behind my ears to check those sounds.
Also, I strongly believe wrs (and quicksin) should be done before fitting to see whatās possible, and definitely use them as proper verification that we customers can hear and give feedback what we can or cannot hear. Immediately.
We shouldnāt be sent out of the office after first fit if our wrs with HAs and 65db isnāt in the ballpark of our best wrs without aids. Yes, in quiet. Thatās first step. If you have time, you do wrs in white noise and see what youāve got. Improve.
@zuikoholic
Having HAs themselves helps, but it isnāt necessary. What is a must is having huge empathy! Without ego issues that they know what works for us And willingness to learn and acquire the equipment that can help you help your patient.
Unfortunately sellers donāt have it, and they donāt invest in equipment because that doesnāt bring profit but cost.
So yeah, Iād say checking if someone follows best practices also checks someoneās empathy and desire to really help you.
My DIY is basically saving myself some trips (and time for my fitter as well), by tweaking those features, or deciding what I want each button to do. Gains per frequency are still in ballpark of my first successful REM fit (I had to have 2 utterly different, and after that we do one as a test each time when I change aids, and omg, I really tested them, m70, m90, 2x m90 rechargeable, 2x m90 13t, 2x p90 13t, now 2x p90rt are left 
)
But yes, I had to understand a lot and learn a lot how sound works, how tech works.
What I like in my fitter is that when he doesnāt know something he says it. It was rare, but happened (when we were discussing theory and trying to figure out how it exactly works).
Oh and Iām math - comp sci engineer 
and Iām curious, so I just dig to find out so many whys. In short, I know how to google, read and understand and ask tons of questions. I donāt think those skills are something special.
What I do see is that many sellers have 0 desire in those skills and results.
One more thing, to test wrs without aids, you use those headphones for tonal audiogram.
To do rem and test wrs with HAs you use calibrated speakers at the exact position.
[b] So if you have rem equipment and audiogram, you have equipment for everything useful. Use it.
If your only equipment is HA audiogram, you have zero.
We want to understand speech, we donāt care about pure tones. Test us with speech! [/b]
@TrueBrit
And donāt come here saying how itās the same or even worse saying how audiogram alone is enough no matter which device does it.
(Edit:
Come here to learn from us and gain ability to help your patients properly.)
Unlike many people who come in person, we here did invest our time in learning something about it.
Manufacturers also encourage using REM verification, I personally heard on some courses on audiology.com
And we know that rem verification works only for those formulas.
So yeah, thatās my proof that point of manufacturer formulas is to reduce returns because many fitters have no clue what theyāre doing and manufacturers try to compensate for incompetence.
The problem is for most board members that they can jump the wrong way on the counterintuitive stuff. I remember having a time convincing you about some of it in Cheltenham.