PUBLICATIONS Inside Illinois Vol. 22, No. 9, Nov. 7, 2002

Clinic provides needed services while fulfilling research

By Melissa Mitchell, News Bureau Staff Writer
(217) 333-5491; melissa@illinois.edu

Photo by Bill Wiegand Speech and hearing services Each year, the Audiology and Speech Clinic, operated by the UI’s department of speech and hearing science, provides services to some 300 people from surrounding communities.

One of the advantages of living in a community that’s home to a major research university is access to resources that would otherwise likely be available only in a large, urban area. The Audiology and Speech Clinic, operated by the UI’s department of speech and hearing science, is just such a resource for residents of Central Illinois.

The mission of the clinic is threefold: to serve as a teaching lab for university students studying audiology and speech pathology, to function as a research facility for faculty and students, and to treat patients with speech and hearing disorders.

Each year, the clinic – which is open to the public – provides audiology and speech-language pathology services to some 300 people from Champaign-Urbana and surrounding communities. Clinic clientele range from children of all ages to college students, adults and seniors, who visit the clinic for assistance with all manner of audiological or speech-language disabilities.

Some patients are referred by physicians or school personnel, though word-of-mouth referrals are also common. Clinic services are fee-based, and rates are comparable to those charged by private clinics and practitioners in the area.

A list of services provided by the clinic is long and comprehensive. Lou Echols-Chambers, who directs the UI clinic, provided the following brief rundown, starting with audiology-related services:

"We administer a wide range of hearing tests, from basic screening to the most sophisticated diagnostic procedures, and dispense both digital and programmable hearing aids, make ear molds and noise-protection plugs, provide therapy services for children, and conduct otoacoustic emissions testing," said Echols-Chambers. Otoacoustic emissions, she explained, are "measurable echoes emitted by the normal cochlea related to the function of the outer hair cells. Otoacoustic emissions help determine the integrity of cochlear function."

Echols-Chambers has been instrumental in initiating, developing and running many new clinical services, including hearing-conservation programs for industry, adult aural rehabilitation programs, infant-parent aural rehabilitation programs, aural rehabilitation programs for college students, hearing-impaired support groups, and a hearing-aid dispensing program. Additionally, she has played a key role in establishing cooperative programs with other clinics.

"We also serve preschool and school-age children," she said. "Services include speech and language evaluation and remediation, hearing-aid and assistive listening devices selection and fitting, auditory training, on-going parent counseling and coordination of services with the schools and other professionals."

The level of time, support and commitment the clinic staff demonstrates to both children and their parents is a big draw for Carolyn Knox, and one of the primary reasons she has been bringing her son to weekly therapy sessions there for the past two years.

"We love it," said Knox, whose 9-year-old son, Cubby, wears two hearing aids to correct for permanent sensory neural hearing loss. Knox said the affliction, which is believed to be genetic, results from "problems with the inner ear in which he has difficulty hearing higher frequencies." Cubby’s type of hearing loss not only makes it difficult for him to hear someone who is more than two feet away, "it also impacts memory, sequencing – the ability to put things in order – and ‘pragmatics,’ or social skills," she said.

Those are some of things Cubby and his therapist work on during their weekly hour-and-a-half-long sessions at the clinic, which Knox is encouraged to sit in on.

"Parents can observe, and that’s huge," said Knox, who added that the assistance her son receives at the UI clinic is well worth the cost because he gets much more one-on-one time with the therapist than he would in a 30-minute session typically offered in the public schools.

"One of the biggest advantages we have to offer is that we have the time to spend (with patients) – especially with the elderly and with little kids," Echols-Chambers said. "They get lots of one-on-one quality time here."

Besides the quality time, Knox appreciates that parents are encouraged to become directly involved in their child’s treatment program.

"We get written lesson plans and we sit down at the beginning of the semester and decide what the goals are," she said.

In addition to audiology services, Echols-Chambers said the clinic provides therapy services in a wide range of speech-language areas. Among them: stuttering; dyspahagia, or swallowing disorders; dysarthria, which she described as "motor speech disorders resulting from disturbed muscular control of the speech mechanism"; and aphasia, a language disorder caused by brain injury. The staff also provides rehabilitation services for people with articulation and phonological disorders, which Echols-Chambers said are speech disorders "characterized by difficulty in producing speech sounds correctly."

One of the major benefits of running a clinic that’s closely linked to academic programs in speech and hearing science is access to experts. "We have one of the few swallowing specialists around – Adrienne Perlman – and Ehud Yairi, who is well known for his stuttering research," Echols-Chambers said.

According to Yairi, the relationship between the clinical staff and the faculty is mutually beneficial.

"Lou has strived to achieve closer integration of the clinical and academic programs in our department, for example, bringing the clinic into research and research in the clinic," he said. "She runs a very professional, high-class clinic for the public."

Echols-Chambers’ professional abilities have not gone unnoticed. She recently was named a fellow in the American Speech-Language Hearing Association, one of the highest honors the association bestows. Echols-Chambers, who is being honored for her administrative vision and action, her clinical work, and her teaching, will be inducted at the association’s annual meeting Nov. 21-24 in Atlanta.

Yairi said the recognition is significant for several important reasons. First, he said, "ASHA has more than 100,000 members, and only 27 received fellow awards this year. The award is even more special in Lou’s case because she is in the clinical area, and it’s not that common for someone to be recognized from the clinical domain of the field as opposed to the research domain."

Winners of the award also must demonstrate influence in the field beyond the community and state level. Evidence of that was provided in the nomination process, Yairi said, by the director of an audiology clinic in a major hospital who wrote: "Lou’s mastery of recent advancements in the field, superior diagnostic skills, use of effective aural rehabilitation techniques, sensitivity in counseling, and caring for patients converge to make her not just an excellent audiologist, but an exceptional one."

Carrie LaFollett, an audiologist at Carle Clinic in Urbana, was not surprised to learn that Echols-Chambers had been honored for her achievements. When she was a graduate student at Illinois, Echols-Chamber was her supervisor.

"The biggest thing she taught us was the importance of professionalism," LaFollett said. "She taught us to remember that the patient is the priority, and if we don’t know an answer, don’t pretend; always strive to find the correct answer.

"She was also very close with some of the children with hearing loss – very close and protective of those kids. They were like her own children. She was an advocate for them."

And while Echols-Chambers had a motherly side that her students saw as well, LaFollett said she made it clear that she had high expectations for them. "Our class had a great dynamic with her," LaFollett said. "We could sit down and shoot the breeze and joke around with her. She was a friend. But we felt it was a matter of earning her respect. If you meet and exceed those expectations, she’ll loosen up."

LaFollett added that she regards Echols-Chambers as a role model. "Now when I supervise students, I want to give them some leeway, but I use my experience with her as a benchmark because I think I turned out OK."

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