Danish audiology: An outsider's view

Abstract

The 1970s were a period when many professionals from different parts of the world, who were interested in audiological enablement (rehabilitation), looked to Denmark for inspiration. They also marked the 25th anniversary of the establishment of the three State Hearing Centres in Århus, Copenhagen and Odense (1,2), established at the inception of the National Hearing Health Service of that country. Such visitors included physicians, audiological scientists and educationalists, covering the range of specialties described by Hindhede and Parving in this Journal (pp****). Among those from the UK who went to Denmark were Andreas Markides (educationalist), Denzil Brooks (audiological scientist) and myself as an audiological physician. We all derived much benefit from our visits, and our experiences which we described elsewhere (3,4). These led to us collaborating to produce a document for the British Society of Audiology on our recommendations for audiological enablement and, in particular, for hearing therapy, in the UK (5). Unfortunately, politics being what they are, our recommendations took some 30 years to be implemented in the UK, eventually with the recent establishment of the MSc course at Bristol University. Returning to Denmark, questions arise as to how such a service developed in Denmark and why the country no longer provides the model, even for other countries with broadly similar sociomedical systems. I shall attempt to address these questions below in a way to complement the interesting analysis offered by Hindhede and Parving. In their paper those authors discuss the dynamics of competing groups of professionals and lay interests in the provision of services for people with hearing difficulties. In addition, they present the background to the establishment of the hearing health care service in Denmark, but do not touch on the personalities involved. From the standpoint of the maintenance and development of the system they touch on the political ideology that has led to a fragmentation of the system, and this needs further emphasis.