Anna Pugh

Hello, I'm Anna Pugh. I'm an audiologist and I work in a private practice, so an independent practice in Downham Market.

So I have a really varied job. The job of an audiologist covers anything to do with ears.

So I can spend quite a lot of time undertaking what's called otoscopy, which is examining people's ears with a little camera and a video otoscope so that people can see inside their ears. And that helps to deal with earwax or problems with the ears.

I test people's hearing and talk about hearing aids or apps to help them listen better. And then I can also work with people with tinnitus, which is a noise in the head.

And I work with people with complex hearing problems. So some people who are very sensitive to loud noise or sensitive to certain types of noise. And that's often, I think young people will experience that sometimes that they get very sort of upset and irritated by sort of crunchy noises or even somebody breathing. And so that's a sensitivity to sound.

So I work with some of those people. So my day could be around looking after those people, testing hearing.

So I'll come in in the morning. I'm usually here between eight and half past eight.

First thing, cup of tea, check the emails, check any mail, and then I prepare the clinic so I will meet with the team, check who's coming in the diary, so check the diary, see what the day's looking like.

So on a day like Monday, we have two clinics running. So I will probably be working on reception, even though I'm the boss, I work on reception, so I'm front of house. So as people come through the door, I'll greet them, I'll give them their forms to fill in, their consent forms, I'll talk to them about any problems, and I'll also manage what's called our Hearing Support Service, which is where we maintain and service and change hearing aids for people and give them out NHS batteries and that kind of thing.

So that would take me up to lunchtime and then I'll probably grab a quick sandwich from the deli down the road and then we've got another session in the afternoon and I finish probably about five or six o'clock.

And then I start doing some admin and then I've got paperwork to do, I've got to complete forms about what we've done today. I've also got, because I'm the director of the business, I've got some form of financial information that I'll need to get ready. So I'll have to do all of those kind of things.

And at some point during the day, I've also got to do a little bit of what we call CPD, which is continuous professional development. So I've got to do a little bit of learning every day. And that keeps me up to date with anything that's happening, but also means that I'm better prepared to deal with the people that come through the door, I've got some ideas about what's happening new.

So I'll look on LinkedIn or I'll check on emails or I'll go to Audiology Online or I'll read some magazines or I'll go to a chat forum and see what's happening in audiology in general and learn a little bit about what other people are doing. I then drive home. I'm about an hour away from home. And then that's my day.

And then we start again the next day.

The main best thing is that as an audiologist I can help someone hear better.

I can keep them connected to their family. I can keep them connected to their life, to their work, to their education, to their learning. I can help them cope better with their interactions with other people, their communication.

And that makes such a difference and it can be a little thing like preparing someone's hearing aid or it could be a major thing like talking to them for the first time about how they're coping with their tinnitus, how they're coping with their day and managing through that mental wellbeing, all those kind of things.

The hardest things are sometimes when people aren't ready for hearing aids.

They know they've got a problem but they're just emotionally not ready. And I see the impact that that causes on their family and their friends, but until somebody's ready to take that step. And sometimes that can take seven to ten years for some adults, which is quite surprising for lots of people.

That's sometimes the hardest thing, because you feel that you failed them and you've not been able to help them. So sometimes that's really, really hard.

Sometimes it's really hard to sit with somebody who's going through a really difficult time with their tinnitus or with their misophonia and listening and supporting them, and how that makes me feel afterwards. That can be really hard.

It was quite strange. My mum would tell you that I went to see a movie when I was very little, a film when I was very little, about a little deaf girl called Mandy who was learning to speak and apparently I was quite fascinated by that and about language and how we use words and all of those things.

And I went to university to do English. I didn't do audiology initially, I did English because I'm interested in language and how we use words and how we communicate with each other.

And then I got a job working in a long-term mental health hospital that was closing and people were being moved into the community. And I realised that I couldn't help these people, I didn't know enough and my skill set was not good enough. So I took myself off and retrained as a hearing therapist audiologist at the City Lit Centre for Deaf People, which was an eye-opener because I'd never spent any time with deaf people who use British Sign Language as their first language.

So I spent a couple of years at the City Lit learning how to sign but learning how to be an audiologist. And then I went to work in audiology and I hadn't realised how huge audiology could be.

So after a couple of years, I found myself concentrating mostly on working with people with tinnitus, but also people with profound learning disabilities, which is why I came into the profession in the first place. And I've gone on through there.

So I've worked in the voluntary sector in charities. I was very recently managing a small deaf charity in Norfolk, which has just restructured. And then I was always working in my own private practice building my tinnitus consultancy.

So it's been a very long process. I've been doing this for over 40-odd years, nearly 47 years now. And I'm still as inspired every day and I still learn every day from the people that come through the door. They've always got something new to teach me that I didn't know and makes me think and makes me find all the tools that I have.

When I was at school, I was very chatty. A lot of my school reports will say, you know, Anna's very chatty and needs not to be so chatty.

But I was also very good at languages. I enjoyed languages. I enjoyed communication and I think and I enjoyed English and I enjoyed language and how we use language and the importance of language and the importance of words.

And I think that my move to audiology has very much grown from that about how I found language and learning important. And I've always loved learning, I've always liked reading, I've always liked language, I love poetry.

So communication and working in a field that allows me to look at how we communicate and encourage people to communicate was an easy move, really. It was an obvious move for me.

But school, yes, school was, I was not the best at sports, or actually very good at sports at all, if I'm honest. I'd much rather be sitting somewhere and reading than running up and down the hockey field.

But I was very good at languages and reading and learning. So school was good for that.

I think one of the things I always say to people when I talk about my career was one of the first times that I realised the difference that I could really genuinely make. And it's a story about a little girl.

Her grandmother had come to see me for hearing aids and we talked to her grandmother about hearing aids and all sorts of things and Granny was fine. And Granny was telling me about her granddaughter who had suddenly become scared of the dark, she was becoming very quiet. Her behaviour was changing. Lots of things were going on. And she was quite concerned.

And so then when Granny came in the next time to see me, she brought the little girl. And Granny and I were talking about tinnitus and noises and all sorts of things. And the little girl said, yes, I hear a monster every night as well. And I talked to Mum and Dad and we realised that the little girl was experiencing tinnitus.

So she was, because it was quiet at bedtime, she was hearing this rumbly, growly noise that she didn't recognise which is something that happens in the brain and a way of the brain trying to make sense of a mismatch of communication signals. And of course, being a little girl, she couldn't understand and she couldn't put it into words and she couldn't explain what was going on. So she was quite frightened.

And so we worked together, she and I and Mum and Dad and Granny. And we developed what I call an imagineering program with her where we started thinking about the noise being not a scary monster under her bed or in her room, but a monster that was keeping her safe. And a good growly monster that was making sure that she was safe and everything was fine and it was a good thing.

And it took a little while and she took a little bit of persuasion. But eventually she started sleeping again. She started feeling better. She was getting back to going to school. She was back engaging with school.

And after a few months, she was back to where she was.

I think be yourself, be who you are, believe in yourself.

I think I went through periods when I was coming into a teenager when I didn't have very much self-confidence. I didn't trust myself. I didn't believe in myself.

And I listened to these people that said, you know, you're too much of a bookworm. You're too chatty. You should be quiet. You should pay attention. You should do this. And that wasn't who I am.

So I think I had a wonderful teacher who took me to one side and just said, here you go, have a book. Off you go. It's fine. Don't worry about it. And that was really important to me to find somebody who believed in me. And this teacher would bring me new books to read and say, you haven't read this, you need to read this. And all of that expanded, expanded who I was.

You know, Dr. Seuss says, you know, the more you read, the more you'll know, the more you know, the more you grow. And it's true. It's true. And I think that's really important. You can't stop learning. You can't stop listening to people.