"Hearing Aids"

Royal Devon have recently changed providers for audiology and I come under the eastern services of the Royal Devon Audiology team at the Royal Devon and Exeter hospital. This is the only site where I can receive hearing aid repairs and batteries. Previously under the provider Chime, I had many options including a Saturday clinic.

As I work full time, I have to take time off to attend the hospital. I do not have someone to drop me off or pick me up so I have to use a combination of transport to attend a clinic and then wait for an unspecified time. This can take up most of a morning and recently they did not have the correct earpiece so I was fitted with a larger one. This is not suitable for me and now I have to take more time out to go back and hope they have restocked.

I do want to stress that I cannot fault the staff at all.

They are all lovely, friendly and helpful.

My complaint is how inaccessible you have made this service and I’m sure I’m not the only one that struggled to get to that site. A trip I will now have to do regularly, just to get batteries. I have been offered a postal service, at my expense, but I’ve just waited 10 days for an important letter to arrive so this isn’t an option.

Please, please can you allow some local doctors surgeries to issue batteries and maybe have a regular hearing aid clinic away from the main hospital site. This would make the service so much more accessible to everyone.

I’ve had hearing problems since I was a child, which has affected my life, and only recently learnt that hearing aids would help after being told they wouldn’t when I was a child. I was so pleased to receive my aids and now I feel this is another barrier, making it very difficult to get repairs and batteries, I recently went a couple of months without aids as I was unable to get time off to attend the clinic during the week.

This was really isolating and I definitely withdrew socially and shied away from having conversations.