11/20/2025
“Will AI take my job?”
If all I did was push buttons on an audiometer… maybe.
But that’s the difference between a technician and a clinician.
Phone apps and AI tools can already:
Play beeps
Record button presses
Spit out a pass/fail or a graph
Useful? Sometimes, yes.
But that’s data collection. It’s not clinical thinking.
Recently I evaluated a child who already carried labels of ADHD and dyslexia.
On paper, it all “made sense.” He was fidgety. He struggled with reading. He had trouble focusing.
But in the booth, something didn’t add up.
In the middle of testing… he fell asleep! (very briefly)
Not bored. Not oppositional. Just out of energy.
Yes, he was shaking his foot.
But what I saw looked less like “hyperactivity” and more like what adults do when they’re driving tired and shake their heads or tap their feet just to stay awake.
A robot running a test would have logged:
hearing loss (due to lack of response), poor attention, abnormal results
A clinician thinks:
Why is this child working so hard just to stay awake?
Is this really an attention problem, or a fatigue/physiology problem?
What else do we need to investigate so school and home expectations actually match his nervous system?
That kind of pattern recognition, curiosity, and real-time observation is exactly what AI cannot do.
If you’re worried that AI will replace you, ask yourself:
👉 Are you only following a protocol?
👉 Or are you using that information to understand the whole human in front of you?
And if you’re a parent wondering whether your child is truly hearing what you think they’re hearing and processing as well as you think they are:
You deserve more than an app and a printout.
You deserve a clinician who will:
Look at the test results
Watch your child in real time
Connect the dots between ears, brain, body, and learning
That’s the work I do every day in my clinic.
Families regularly travel to see me because they’re done guessing and done collecting labels that don’t change anything.
If you’re ready to truly understand how well your (or your child’s) ears are serving learning and daily life, schedule an assessment with me.
The clarity you gain should feel like you finally turned the lights on. 🌟
