I just took the above course. Learned a few interesting things. I will just summarize now and add an illustration or two and further info gleaned from course transcript, when and if it is available to me as a non-CEU, non-HCP just auditing the course.
First, the M&RIE microphone on the receiver is not recommended for small ear canals or ear canals with sharp bends or protruding bony growth. Also, not for people with steeply sloping hearing loss, e.g., if you have little loss in low frequency but then your hearing suddenly takes a very big dive in the high frequencies, not recommended. Gently sloping loss works better, either in the mild to moderate range or the moderate to severe. For the former, tulip domes or closed domes would be preferred. No OPEN domes. For the latter (moderate to severe), either power domes or earmolds would be best and the presenter said earmolds would be excellent, even better if you can tolerate a lot of occlusion to prevent feedback.
On “M&RIE directionality” vs. “All-Access Directionality,” the only time that came up was in answer to a question whether on advanced fitting options did one need to hunt for the M&RIE option in a dropdown for any setting. The presenter mentioned choosing M&RIE directionality vs. All-Access Directionality as one place where there was such a choice but said in general it would be not so great a choice to pick the M&RIE directionality over All-Access as you lose a lot of the “programmed-in” benefits that come with the All-Access Directionality choice (I presume that she’s talking about automatic implementation of feature settings akin to Phonak’s Autosense). She mentioned for most feature choices, you didn’t need to hunt for the M&RIE variety of that fitting option as the fitting software automatically took into account whether your HA’s were fitted with the M&RIE receiver and automatically picked the best choice, etc.
Since I have one very narrow canal that may take a sharp bend and the other a relatively big canal, I’m wondering if that rules me out as a One or Jabra M&RIE wearer even though I’d have no problem with a completely occlusive earmold (I’ve worn one for years).
The interesting thing about the Audiology Online course was at the beginning there was a poll as to why participants were there. The last choice was essentially “just find out about M&RIE,” which I picked. Shortly after that, I noticed that I had no ability to chat and ask questions, participate in other polls, or see the poll results in Zoom. Don’t know if it was just a Zoom glitch or whether there was a moderator limiting the ability of auditors who were non-HCPs, e.g., me!, to participate in the proceedings. The downside was that I didn’t have any opportunity to ask the presenter any questions at the end since I had no chat/messaging capability to the presenter but I take it folks registered for CEUs did (they are paying customers of Audiology Online!). I’ll see if a transcript shows up with the course completion in my online account and in another post I’ll add one or two images that show how steeply sloping loss limits the ability to fit and M&RIE receiver. Have to go for auto repair now!