WEBVTT

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Imagine how difficult and dangerous

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life would be without the critical

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sense of hearing . Hearing is a

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multidimensional sense that provides an

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indispensable amount of information

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during military operations and training ,

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whether you serve on the ground at sea

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or in the air , your ability to hear is

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critical to your individual and unit

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performance and to the overall mission

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success . Good

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hearing is essential for being able to

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understand what's going on in

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background noise . It affects your job

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performance especially on the

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battlefield . A periodic hearing test

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is important to enable early

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identification and treatment of hearing

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loss . The hearing test brings

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visibility to an invisible impairment .

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An annual hearing test gives us

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feedback on whether or not the

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individuals wearing their hearing

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protection correctly . It gives us an

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indication of early signs of hearing

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loss . It may indicate that the hearing

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protection that we're wearing is not

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adequate . So it gives not only the

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individual receiving the hearing test

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information but also the audiologist .

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Most individuals who have a noise

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induced hearing loss are not aware that

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they have a hearing loss until it

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becomes very severe . We need to teach

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our service members how to wear hearing

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protection correctly . We've seen

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service members in the clinic who go to

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the range or fire their weapon one time

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without hearing protection and they

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have permanent hearing loss from that .

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All the noise exposures that you're

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gonna have in the service , plus the

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everyday noise exposures that you may

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have at home are all cumulative and can

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contribute to hearing loss . So it's

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important to teach our service members

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from the time they enter the service to

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when they leave to let them know that

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they are wearing their ear protectors

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correctly .