"My mission statement for myself and the practice is always to aspire to do better," Dr. Bauman explains. "You never know how your personal and professional life is going to end up, but I'm very happy with how mine has turned out."

So how does one build a resume that includes engineer, audiologist, entrepreneur, inventor, and innovator? "No matter what you do, make sure you love it because it shows in a lot of different ways," Dr. Bauman says. "If you love what you do, work doesn't become a chore, it becomes a source of joy. And that's what audiology has been for me-one big love affair in my life."

Opportunity Knocks

When Dr. Bauman left his native Poland in 1969 to explore the opportunities America had to offer, he had no idea he was about to stumble into a career that would change his life and the lives of so many others.

"My start in audiology was really quite accidental and it was mostly due to my natural curiosity," he explains. Utilizing his master's degree in electro-acoustics and electronics from Wroclaw Polytechnic Institute in Poland, Dr. Bauman took a position at a company that designed and manufactured auditory equipment and audiometers. Soon he signed up for a basic course in audiology at Columbia University's Teachers College to delve a little deeper into the world of hearing.

During the course, a few professors approached him to see if he would be interested in switching professions and exploring a career in audiology. "I was young, I was curious and they offered to pay for my tuition," Dr. Bauman recalls. "Opportunity knocked and I answered-that's how I became an audiologist."

After completing his master's and doctoral degrees in audiology at Columbia University, Dr. Bauman quickly moved up the ranks in the field. By 1980, he was directing the Hearing, Speech and Language Clinic at Yale-New Haven Hospital in New Haven, CT, and teaching as an assistant clinical professor at the Yale School of Medicine.

Nearly a decade later, he decided he was ready for a new challenge. "In terms of my profession, I had worked in a lot of different situations as an audiologist but one thing I didn't do and was curious about was how it would really feel to have my own private practice," Dr. Bauman says.

He had a slight advantage because he was a known player in the audiology community, but Dr. Bauman still had a lot of footwork to do in redefining himself as a private practitioner. "I was basically knocking at the doors of all the local MDs and reminding them of who I was, what I did and why they should refer patients to me," he remembers. "In terms of becoming successful in a practice, one thing I've found is that in addition to hard work, you have to be very determined in terms of where you're going and what you'd like to accomplish."

A Winning Formula

When Dr. Bauman founded the Hearing, Balance and Speech Center in 1988, he had a simple but definitive mission. "The most important ingredient of building a practice, in my opinion, is to provide exceptional services," he says. "Remember-what's responsible for a practice's success is passion for your work and compassion for your patients."

That maxim has seen his practice grow from one office in Hamden to a total of five locations in Connecticut, providing services both to in-state patients and those in neighboring states like New York and Massachusetts. The expansion happened quite organically-ear, nose and throat specialists would ask Dr. Bauman to come to a particular area to provide hearing services for their patients, and eventually he opened offices to meet those needs.

"Knowing I cannot be in several places at the same time, the key in expanding to different locations was basically making sure I surrounded myself with good and competent people," Dr. Bauman says. "I cannot do everything so I need to be able to delegate work to my colleague audiologists. I learned very quickly that I need to allow them to have the freedom of making their own choices and decisions."

Currently, Dr. Bauman has three professional certified and licensed audiologists and two certified and licensed hearing aid specialists on staff. When considering a new team member, Dr. Bauman looks primarily at people skills. "I want to know that they are truly interested in improving somebody else's life. Knowing how to interact with the patient and understanding who the patient is and what the patient needs is very crucial," he says. "I feel professional skills are secondary-I can help them to strengthen their audiological or hearing aid-related skills but with those other ingredients, either you got it or you don't."

And Gulten O. Walker, BA, NBC-HIS, has got it. With more than 15 years of experience as a hearing aid specialist, she's been at the Hearing, Speech and Balance Center for more than six. "I find it very rewarding to see that sparkle in people's eyes just when they start hearing and when they realize what they were missing," she says. "I like to treat patients the way I would want my parents to be treated."

Ranging Services

The most important part of working with a team is knowing your own strengths and weaknesses as well as those of your colleagues, says Dr. Bauman. He encourages the staff to take advantage of each other's assets to help improve their own skills. This teamwork mentality takes the focus off of the individual and back to patient care.

"My ultimate goal is to do what's best for the patient and if that means going to someone else who has more expertise in a particular area, I have no problem doing that," Walker says. "I know what my capabilities are and if I come across something that I don't feel comfortable with or I need assistance with, then I go to one of the audiologists and we'll work on things together."

Those qualities go a long way when it comes to word-of-mouth recommendations, the practice's most successful marketing technique. Most patients come from physician or patient referrals. However, the practice also gets its name out into the community by holding several town hall meetings throughout the course of the year in different areas.

It often hosts these free educational seminars in community libraries or senior centers. In addition to talking about basic hearing issues and hearing aids, presenters also discuss tinnitus and balance and fall issues that frequently affect older age groups.

"I want to provide good access to audiological care for all ages," explains Dr. Bauman, who has a clientele that literally spans a lifetime, from tiny newborns to patients over 100 years old. "The way I look at it is that they all have the same needs in terms of hearing-they all need to communicate."

Yet why they need to hear better and how to make that happen varies with each age group. For instance, Dr. Bauman recently helped a 17-year-old patient with whom he's been working for years to prepare for college. "He faces different challenges and has different ambitions in his life than my 100-year-old lady who wants to make sure that when she plays bridge, she can hear everybody," he says. "Regardless of their age, I enjoy the satisfaction of making my patients' personal, professional and social lives better with their hearing aids."

A Technical Perspective

When Dr. Bauman first started working with hearing aids, the only way to get them was to send a measure of the hearing loss to the hearing aid company and have it manufacture a suitable product. The doctor's engineering background made the process a little bit different for him-he would often specify the type of matrix, microphone or receiver he wanted to use.

"I find my technical background extremely helpful, in terms of understanding how the hearing aid works inside. My acoustical background allows me to understand also how the sound is being propagated in different environmental situations," Dr. Bauman explains. "So it allows me to understand how to program the hearing aid better in terms of making sure it works optimally in different acoustically challenged situations."

This technical knowledge allows him to think about how he can help patients overcome certain hearing-related problems in terms of technology, the hearing application, how the hearing aid is worn by the patient, and how it is utilized by the patient.

"Over the last 10 years or so, with the programmability available with technological advancements, it's much more rewarding to work with hearing aids because you can do more," Dr. Bauman says. "The flexibility in terms of technology and the styles available right now gives us a much greater opportunity to make a more successful fit."

But even with all of the options available, sometimes patients still need a hearing aid that's designed specifically for them. With a laboratory on-site, the Hearing, Speech and Balance Center can provide custom-made hearing aids as well as prompt repairs. "If I were somewhere else and a patient needed something special, all we had was what's on the market," Walker says. "Here, we have an advantage because Dr. Bauman is capable of designing his own instruments for whatever our patients need."

For instance, if patients need repairs to the wiring or microphones in their hearing aids, Dr. Bauman can open the devices up and make the necessary changes in the lab. This shortens the wait time significantly so that patients can often have repairs done in a few days, sometimes even on the same day. "When I tell patients they can pick their hearing aid up in a few hours, they can't believe it," Walker says. "Usually if we were to send out a hearing aid, it takes two to three weeks-having our own lab provides a major convenience for patients."

Breaking the Mold

In 2004, Dr. Bauman created a device for a patient that was not only customized-it was something the world had never seen before. The patient experienced an occlusion effect with his completely-in-the-canal hearing aid. Dr. Bauman tried all of the typical solutions to resolve the problem but none worked. Finally, he suggested an instrument that the patient would wear behind his ear that would send the sound into his ear. He put together a couple of coarse instruments to see how it might work and when the patient tried them on, everything changed.

That day, the prototype of the first receiver-in-the-ear (RITE) hearing aid was born. That patient happened to be an entrepreneur and businessman, and he worked with Dr. Bauman to manufacture and market the device, which eventually evolved into the Vivatone® hearing aid.

"That invention revolutionized the entire hearing aid history," Walker says. "Now we can fit people with normal hearing in the lows without affecting their own voice and just pick up on the frequencies that they need the help in. That capability just wasn't there before."

Before, patients with normal hearing in the low frequencies but precipitous loss in the mid- and high-frequencies had to use a larger behind-the-ear hearing aid, which would plug up their ears and change how their own voice sounded to them-actually creating a loss.

Dr. Bauman recently saw a man who used an in-the-ear hearing aid before he was fitted with a RITE hearing aid. He had to leave the RITE device at the office for repairs, but the doctor reminded him he could use his in-the-ear devices in the meantime. The patient replied, "You know, I don't know why I'm keeping them-I would never use them. I never want to go back to a hearing aid that plugs up my ear and makes me hear the way I used to hear."

"It was so much better from an acoustical point of view to have a receiver in the ear, but change is not always easy to accept and it took quite a while to catch on," Dr. Bauman says. "But I would say right now the majority of small behind-the-ear hearing aids dispensed are probably hearing aids with a receiver in the ear. It's a style of hearing aid that I am sure is going to be popular for years to come."

If it weren't for Dr. Bauman's knowledge of acoustics and auditory technology, the RITE hearing aid might not exist. But the experience of developing a hearing aid has made a personal and professional impact on his career as an audiologist. "It has helped me to think about finding solutions in a more creative way," he says.

"Understanding and having a broader knowledge in terms of the technology of hearing aids and some of the acoustics helps me-and I think would help anybody-to become a better hearing aid provider," Dr. Bauman says. "I would encourage all the audiology programs to think about incorporating more information about technology, what makes the hearing aid work and the acoustics of different environments."

Colleen Mullarkey is a former associate editor of ADVANCE.