Hello and welcome back for another episode of the Future Ear Radio podcast!
For this week’s episode, I had the pleasure of speaking with Frank Wartinger, Au.D. – Audiologist, Founder of Earmark Hearing Conservation, and Host of the Talking Ears podcast.
During this episode, Frank and I discuss:
- Frank’s backstory as a musician, experiencing tinnitus at an early age, and his eventual pursuit to become an Audiologist
- Obtaining his Au.D. from Salus Univerity and some of his mentors along the way
- Starting EarMark Hearing Conservation to provide hearing wellness for musicians in the form of healthcare, hearing protection and occupational safety
- The importance of educating the musician community on the importance of hearing health so that musicians serve as vocal advocates and ambassadors of hearing healthcare within the music scene
- Frank becoming a Course Director with the Council for Accreditation in Occupational Hearing Conservation (CAOHC)
- Extending the knowledge of hearing healthcare to allied medical professionals (i.e. occupational therapists) to dramatically expand the provision of hearing wellness
- The role that Frank’s podcast, Talking Ears, has on his business
- Some of the highs and low, and learned experiences Frank’s had over the first few years of his business
It was a real treat to host Frank on directly after the Mike Santucci episode, as Frank is one of Mike’s proteges and a graduate of the Sensaphonic’s Gold Circle Program. It’s truly Great to hear that Mike’s work and impact is being carried forward by people like Frank!
-Thanks for Reading-
Dave
EPISODE TRANSCRIPT
Dave Kemp
Okay, everybody and welcome to another episode of the future ear Radio Podcast. I’m pumped today to be joined by Dr. Frank Wartinger. So Frank, thanks so much for being on the show how you doing today?
Frank Wartinger, Au.D.
I’m doing great. I’m happy to be here. Happy to be having this conversation.
Dave Kemp
Well, thank you so much for coming on. I you know, the last guest I had on was Dr. Mike Santucci. And you know, as doing some of the prep for that episode, I was listening to some other podcasts that he had been on, and I came across yours. I mean, maybe that’s a good way to maybe kick things off is share a little bit about your podcast and the motivation for starting that which I’m sure kind of like leads into your own personal life story. And from there, we can talk about Mike and some of these other influences that you’ve had throughout your career that I know as well. But But let’s go back to the start and hear about like your whole immersion into audiology in the world of hearing health hearing conservation.
Frank Wartinger, Au.D.
I love it. And your episode with Mike was excellent. I just was listening to that and found it to be you perfectly captured Mike, which is just the best thing. And he he’s got such an amazing story. I’m going to pale in comparison, but I’ll do my best. You asked me to start about the show. The show’s been going for about a year and a half. I started this out of basically, I’ve always had this intense want to share musician stories and help people understand their perspective. I’m a former musician, myself or current musician, former professional engineer, myself, and I came to audiology kind of as an outsider’s perspective. And I found it to be fascinating. But I find that the musician’s perspective is just a Enigma in the field. And the best way that I wanted to present that was just to let the musician talk, because what I often find is that we as the, I’ll include you in this, the safety geeks, the the you know, the health, the health nuts, we tend to kind of thump our copper textbooks and our our hearing Bibles and say, This is what you must do to protect your ears. And I always find, if I just be quiet for a second, the musician knows what to do. And they’ll still reflect it back to me in a million better words than I would have ever used. So give him the floor, let him talk. And that was basically the spine of that. And so it’s been going strong, a little slower than we were anticipating. But the production takes a long time, and we tried to put some care into it.
Dave Kemp
That’s awesome. And remind the audience, what’s the name of your show?
Frank Wartinger, Au.D.
Oh, thank you. It’s called Talking Ears. Kinda like Talking Heads. But we’re very focused on just the last David Byrne. Little less David, although, you know, David Byrne, hit me up, come on talking years.
Dave Kemp
No, yeah, that would be cool. That would be a hell of a guest. I wonder if he has any sort of tinnitus or hearing conservation related issues, or maybe always been taking pristine care of his ears?
Frank Wartinger, Au.D.
You know, neither would surprise me, given the genius behind that person.
Dave Kemp
Okay, so you have this podcast, and it’s awesome. Again, I was telling Frank prior to recording that, like one of the best parts about this show is it’s like you start as like this, you’re looking and focused on this one topic. And that leads to a guest. And then that just spawns into all of these different connections and tangents for you to chase down. And so I was able to listen to a few of your episodes. And, you know, I found it to be first off, it’s a really interesting format. As a musician, I like that you have like these musical interludes throughout, which are really neat. Very different than than my show, I, it’s giving me some food for thought, you know, maybe, like, bust out my drum kit and start riffing a bit. But, um, you know, I thought that it was really interesting, though, going off some of the conversations that I’ve had on the show about these different segments within audiology. The reason I wanted to bring you on directly after Mike was because I think that this home musician side of the audiology world is a little bit for my own sake, I don’t know it all that well. And so I’m curious and I’m trying to learn a lot about it. So walk me through as a musician, when you were growing up like what, how did this whole thing come to be where you go from musician to audiologist?
Frank Wartinger, Au.D.
Yeah, I think it’s a it’s a interesting path. And I’ve heard a lot of other people have very similar paths growing up as musicians, just having music in the family. I think that type of upbringing when you have a musical family and your whole life is playing instruments and being in performance mode lends itself to appreciating audiology and appreciating our ears in a slightly different way, so maybe that’s everybody’s commonality, my commonality. There was also, in addition to just being a sound nut who just like, you know, I like psycho acoustics as a high schooler, you know, that was like my favorite concept to learn about, but also I injured my ears. And not that dramatic of a way I just developed tinnitus constant tinnitus when I was a 1314 year old, loud video guitar player. And that led me literally into the doors of an audiologist, I got fit with musicians earplugs at the age of 13, or 14, and wore them ever since. And that left that brought me through high school, I don’t know if I shared much about it with my friends and fellow performers and everything. Maybe I was talking about a lot with them. I don’t really remember that aspect. But what I do remember was when I got to college, for production, I was working in venues working in studios, my ears, were giving me some problems. And I think I had pushed my ears a little bit too much, especially in the live settings, a lot of live sound mixing, that I just started looking for answers of how to how to help my own ears. And without giving away too much about what we’re going to talk about throughout the rest of the hour. If the resources that are available, now were available, then I wouldn’t be an audiologist, I would have just gotten some consults, felt better about my ears and continue being a musician. I’ve thought about that a lot. I think I’m very, very honest with that, that I went into audiology because I couldn’t find the resources that were out there. But there are very far and few between and I couldn’t find them. So I decided to go back to grad school to figure out what was going on with my own ears. And eventually, hopefully, and then it’s what came to be help other musicians, you know, treat this head on. And that’s, that’s actually
Dave Kemp
a really wild story that you it was really the pursuit of audiology was was more or less a byproduct of your own, like desire to get to the bottom of what was going on with yourself. But I actually think that that speaks to one of the biggest issues with like hearing health care, broadly speaking, is that it’s so pervasive yet I think it’s so I think it leaves a lot of people unsure of what the first step is, even is to take oversight. I’ve made this comment before that I think that and I mean this like not trying to be disparaging in any way. But I don’t think that the average American at least knows what an audiologist is. I think that there’s a lot of opportunity that that provides. But in many ways, I think that it’s actually kind of unsurprising, that is extreme as it is to go and pursue a doctoral level degree to to figure out what’s going on with yourself. It’s sort of is a microcosm of I think the broader issue, which is that it maybe this is changing, you know, with new media and with like people that are really taking it upon themselves to be a resource for the public, is that I just don’t think that there was a great job around communicating to the masses of have the full scope of what an audiologist or hearing healthcare professional does be because everybody connotates it with with hearing aids, unfortunately,
Frank Wartinger, Au.D.
I can’t agree more because I have my own perspective was I had seen an audiologist. As a teenager, I was treated by an audiologist, I was tested. I was given the earplugs, I wore those vital earplugs with vital musicians earplugs until they probably shriveled up. Yeah. And yet, when I was tasked with how do I help my own ears, the word audiologist and come to mind, I couldn’t find I’m sure if I searched it further and now now I know I was in New York City area, there were three audiologist who I could have seen in that area. And I I talked with some of them now as as colleague and I wish that I just knew those resources and knew how to search for things. Granted, that was a while ago. So we had different ways of searching for stuff. But you’re totally right. There’s just a lack of public awareness of what we can offer to the healthcare space and offer to people who are having these very niche concerns.
Dave Kemp
So you go and you get your doctoral Where did you get your AUD? Here in Philly,
Frank Wartinger, Au.D.
so I’m still stationed in Philly but Philadelphia has this wonderful grad program at what was then the Pennsylvania College of Optometry confusing. I know they found that out too and change the name to Salas Univer versity Oh, okay. Alice is currently a very large well known school. Great reputation. It is now changing to I believe this is public knowledge. Now it’s merging with Drexel University, which is a very large university in the area as well. So it’s kind of a complicated answer, but I would say that I went to the Pennsylvania College of Optometry now Salus soon Drexel.
Dave Kemp
I did not know that about the merging. If I understand though, I think Salas is the biggest ad program from like headcounts. Right? Yeah, I think they graduate, the largest number of, of great new grads.
Frank Wartinger, Au.D.
That’s true. And it’s been for a while, because early on, they developed a a remote program, a off campus program where people could come and get their AUD after already having their master’s. And I would, I don’t know the statistics, but it seemed like for a while every other audiologists who had went back to get their Adi, their AUD, their doctorate came out of the the Salas or at that time PCO, Pennsylvania College College of Optometry program. That since closed down, they’re not doing the remote program anymore. Nobody is. But their current graduating classes well over 20. I teach there now I started doing a they’re hearing conservation hearing loss prevention program class for the for the graduate students. And I have 29 students in my class. Wow, that’s awesome. It is a lot though. When we’re done with those, I have 29 papers that I have to grade.
Dave Kemp
That’s sounds enjoyable. So okay, so you go to call it Salas, you get your ad? Did you know at this point, you know, obviously you had the background in you get tinnitus and you’ve had exposure to an audiologist. So you had some familiarity around this, but how early into or even was it before he joined the doctoral program that you wanted to go into this, like hearing conservation side of it and build a business around that?
Frank Wartinger, Au.D.
That’s a really good question. It’s, it might be a little revisionist history here. But I have, this has always been my goal when I signed. When I applied to Salas. I remember in my interview, I was talking with shout out to Trisha dobrowski who was sort of the the head of the program at that moment, and it did my interview. She made me feel super welcomed, because as we’re talking and I’m blabbing about how I just want to treat musicians and prevent hearing loss, she was pointing at, I believe it was Kevin Moe that she had worked with. And she was like, Yeah, I know what you’re talking about. I worked with this blues guy, and I’m like, Man, I’m home like I found. We’re good now. So it’s really been the whole purpose. The reason why it’s revisionist history is because I’ve been working also in pediatrics. I did about 10 years of my career right after graduating in pediatric hospitals. And I love that work. I really do. I enjoy working with pediatrics. I’ve really enjoyed my colleagues. I have since for the last almost two years now year and a half gone full time to just my my own work I’ve been doing earmark hearing conservation, my own program for since I graduated basically doing music audiology, but now that is my full devotion, which which means I had to give up pediatrics and for anybody who’s ever worked in pediatric and liked it, unlike Michael Santucci, but if you liked working in pediatrics, you know that it’s tough to give that up. That’s that’s pretty special work.
Dave Kemp
And I just ask real quick, what were you doing in the pediatric setting? Are you doing like diagnostics or treatment before battery everything?
Frank Wartinger, Au.D.
full battery basically, I wasn’t doing cochlear implants. But everything else. The last couple years over at the Children’s Hospital Philadelphia, amazing place incredible institution. I was doing a lot of inpatient care. So working with folks who are inpatient and doing a lot of electrophysiology testing, while people are in the operating room, that type of work, a lot of hearing testing, a lot of I was actually managing a program for the tinnitus patients, anybody who came in with tinnitus, I sort of was the point person for that, as well as the point person for our hearing loss prevention program. So it was kind of a unique program that we have there where we did and they still do public outreach and community events. We set up a whole hearing screening program across all these Three Kay’s a lot of work was done in the hearing loss prevention for pediatrics side. Now you’re making me miss it. That was just kidding.
Dave Kemp
I’m walking you down memory lane. reminiscing.
Frank Wartinger, Au.D.
Yeah. But hearing hearing loss prevention for pediatrics, it was kind of a, it is a kind of unique program when I was I started it and and it’s been handed off since and going strong. I’ve heard.
Dave Kemp
Okay, cool. So you do the pediatric stem for a while. And then two years ago, a year and a half ago, you branch off and you start EarMark Hearing Conservation? Is that the name of it EarMark Hearing Conservation,
Frank Wartinger, Au.D.
Earmark Hearing Conservation, which I started, basically, after graduating and have been doing it on the side, which a lot of folks know who do niches, it’s tough to make a full day job out of something that is, quite arguably a niche. But I determined about two years ago that without, without devoting full time attention to it, it was not going to ever grow to where I wanted it to be. So that that made the tough decision to step away from the children’s work.
Dave Kemp
biatch work. Okay. All right. So then with what you’re doing now, give me a day in the life, if you will, I bet that it’s variable, so it’s probably not super consistent. So even if you want to give me some examples, I’m just curious, like, what, what goes on within your new? Or let’s call it your side business. That’s now your full time hustle?
Frank Wartinger, Au.D.
Yeah, it’s a full time hustle. It’s a whole, it’s a whole business, which is wild. It’s a four sided business now? Well, it’s a really good question. I think you hit it, that it’s variable, just like your days, you know, some days you have interviews, some days, you’re, you’re doing all your other duties and knows what exactly, so you’re putting on different hats. I have now it seems like four or five different hats. But I can kind of explain the scope event. One big thing that I’m doing is obviously working with musicians, one to two days a week, I’m traveling out and seeing folks in their homes and their studios in venues and rehearsal spaces, recording studios and working with them directly doing hearing testing in your monitor fittings, your plugs, counseling for tinnitus, all that stuff. I see those folks also in a clinic nearby, where I’m lucky enough to get a deal to rent some space for these folks. The other big thing that I’m doing right now is chaotic, course directing, which is for anybody unfamiliar, it’s the Council for Accreditation of occupational hearing conservationists, which means basically, nurses, physicians in the occupational health world who do hearing testing, they actually perform more hearing tests than they say this then even audiologists do in the US every year. And so they need to be trained. And the training programs are these multiple day training sessions, which are very intensive and we teach people, the basics of audiology, as well as the ins and outs of the regulations that pertain to industry, mining, all of that. And so I’ve built a business doing before in person courses across the Northeast here. And now, we’ve really focused since 2020. Something happened in 2020. I don’t remember what but something happened
Dave Kemp
something virtual. My time No, no, it will come
Frank Wartinger, Au.D.
to you will come to me. It comes to all of us eventually. But I don’t mean literally and figuratively. It really shouldn’t be flippant about the pandemic, but it did it did change the landscape. And since then, we’ve been really putting a lot of energy into making virtual courses a reality and they’ve been working really, really well. I am very proud of the program that we have developed and we do something like 30 courses a year through virtually as well as now we’re getting back to doing some in persons. So that’s, that’s a large percentage of my time nowadays, probably about 40 to 50% of my business and my time is the chaotic courses vary and then who let’s see here, hi, today’s a good example I spend a lot of time usually interviewing somebody but today I get the rare and sweat inducing treat of of having the mic turned on me
Dave Kemp
sitting in the hot seat.
Frank Wartinger, Au.D.
Oof, it feels good though. You’re a great interviewer. So it kind of feels nice. But yeah, again to produce this Show is a labor of love and a joy and reconnect. It connects me back with my old life of just, you know, producing and recording and editing. And then the other thing that I’ve been doing a lot of recently is telepractice tele audiology, which is something that we could probably spend hours just talking about because it’s this new amazing facet of audiology that probably I probably a couple listeners just did a spit take when we just said, we’re doing tele audiology, but specifically for musicians, there’s a program set up through music cares. And I have a number of appointments this morning. In between managing the business and editing some podcasts, I saw a couple of musicians and talk them, talk to them about their hearing test results and how to better protect themselves and continue their career. So I don’t know if that answers your question. But
Dave Kemp
does I want to I want to actually kind of like talk about each of those because I think they’re all really interesting. So the first one, it’s with chaos. I think this is very interesting, because it’s the first thing that comes to mind here is speaking of Salus earlier, Dr. Victor Bray, he and Amin M Lonnie, who I think is the president elect of ADA, those two have done a lot of really good work around the more or less like the state of the labor within hearing healthcare, so you know, kind of like looking at the the full spectrum of hearing instrument specialist audiologist EMTs. You know, and I think that they’ve, I think that if I’m recalling correctly, there’s only like, you know, lose some ballpark of 15 to 20,000 hearing professionals in the US. And, you know, I think that we hear some of these sort of phrases thrown around all the time about how many people there are in need of the services. And you know, it’s like if you, if you like, somehow do the math, it’s like, you know, you get one audiologists or one hearing health care professional for however many people, you know, divide, I guess, the total population by 20,000, if you’re being generous, and it still leaves you with all these people. And so I’ve had some conversations. You know, I had a guy on John swin, from Johns Hopkins. And, you know, that was one of the conversation, or one of the aspects of that conversation was we were talking about how I think that, you know, one of the best opportunities for audiologists is to find a way to more or less extend themselves. And I think that, you know, again, there’s just not enough workers, there’s not enough labor. And so I think that one way, I think there’s two ways that you can really try to combat that issue. One is making the professional more avail available, and I think that will tie into the telehealth stuff. But the other is to allow for them to sort of disseminate their knowledge and expertise to some of these, like allied medical professionals. And I think the occupational health people are a perfect example of this, like, to your point, they might be performing more screenings than anyone writes that are kind of like, they’re like the early detection apparatus that’s really kind of trained to understand like, you know, pass fail, but catching people and understanding like, who falls into that. And so I think that, again, like I kind of think that there’s a bit of a knee jerk reaction within this community to say that, Oh, no, like, it all needs to be facilitated and administered by audiologists sort of like the idea that there’s a scarcity mentality of like, that’s technically my patient or my colleagues patient. But again, it sort of flies in the face of this whole notion that there are, you know, like 10s of 1000s of people per every audiologist or every hearing healthcare professionals. So I think there’s a lot of opportunity there. And I think it’s really interesting to hear somebody that’s like building a business around that because someone’s got to train the this like extension of a workforce to do things in the way that would be sort of like, vetted and approved by the hearing healthcare professional community.
Frank Wartinger, Au.D.
Completely. I totally respond to that the the numbers that I know are about there’s about 20 to 23,000 occupational hearing conservationists who are folks who are credentialed and able to do hearing screenings, hearing testings and occupational setting, who aren’t audiologists, and all of these hearing tests, not all of them have to be reviewed by audiologist, but some do so audiologists are involved in the process. says, but historically since for about 50, something years, chaos has been around training people to do this. And there’s only been at any given moment 100 to 300. course directors who, typically speaking are mostly audiologists, there are some who aren’t. But mostly it’s licensed audiologists doing these trainings, which is to say, it’s such a small group of us who are training this vast majority of people doing the vast majority of tests. And it’s sort of a shadow part of audiology that, you know, to be honest, I didn’t know about when I was in grad school. And now I teach all my students about it, because I want them to know that these are career opportunities, I want them to know that for the exact reason you said, through your education, you can educate others. And you can create this kind of it’s a pyramid shaped scheme, but we try not.
Dave Kemp
Here, it’s not a Ponzi scheme, a Ponzi scheme,
Frank Wartinger, Au.D.
but it is pyramid shape, because of your really great knowledge and skills to educate, can then impact. I mean, I’ve trained over 2000 oases now, and occupational hearing conservationists, each of them is responsible for if you run the numbers, over 1000 workers who are exposed to hazardous noise, so how many, you know if you want to be grandiose about it, right? How many workers then have had influenced by our what I think is high quality education. I’m biased, but I think of it as high quality. So I like to think that we are disseminating this information in a much more effective or efficient way. Yeah, then it then one on one with patients, they’re both really important. But it goes back to something that I think the ADA would would respond to, as well is, you know, work at the top of your license, at the top of our license might not be literally in the room, with every set of ears, but maybe educating those who are in the room with every set of ears, right? That’s a much higher call. Again, both are important. I love doing one on one care. But there is something here to say that this is maybe maybe an evolution, maybe next up
Dave Kemp
totally, I mean, and I think that there is there’s a lot of nuance to this, but the way I sort of have thought about this is that, you know, the audiologist, in many ways. And again, if you’re thinking about it as a spectrum of like, you know, the labor spectrum, so, you know, on one hand, you have the surgeon and then on the other you have the instrument specialist. And so, in optometry, it’s very well defined what the optometrist does, right, which sits right in the middle. And I think that audiology has sort of, in particular audiology has sort of struggled with, where they sort of fit on that spectrum. And I think that the revenue model of hearing aid sales has sort of pulled them further along over here, when I think that their role actually needs to be closer to the middle and providing, I don’t know if it’s necessarily like providing the diagnostics as much as it is, I think being like you just said, that facilitator of call it best practices or standards are just like the arbiter of like what you’re supposed to really be doing, because I don’t think it’s feasible to think that, you know, like, you, as Frank would be doing, you said, You’ve trained 2000 people, so that would be 200,000 people if we’re being, you know, just like taking these numbers at face value. So I don’t know, if you would literally have the bandwidth to test 200,000 people. So wouldn’t it be more, wouldn’t it be a more effective use of your time to kind of cater to the, to the people in the method in which you can do the masses, and then I see the professional in the audiologist is like, the one on one visits will remain and will continue to remain? Because those are the people that really need your help. So it’s kind of a matter of like, how do you triage that in such a way so that you’re getting people coming to you that truly warrant that level of care? You know, and that’s kind of how I thought about it is that it this whole thing with like, the chaotic stuff is actually I think, incredibly exciting. And I think it’s something where it just allows for the value of audiology, and the provision of that knowledge to just be so much more mass disseminated in a way that I think you’re going to just ultimately get way more people through the doors that should be coming through the doors, if you will,
Frank Wartinger, Au.D.
completely. I mean that that speaks to what you’re saying. Before about accessibility, to reducing barriers, reducing barriers to good care, goes down to really good education and really good access to training. And then one other layer that we haven’t even talked about. So who knows which one of these we’re going to get time to chat about. But another layer of kind of how to work at the top of your license is doing consulting, because as an audiologist, I mean, everybody who’s listening to this as an audiologist, who is an audiologist, you have a unique depth of knowledge into how not just the hearing system works, and not just how the patient’s hearing system works, but how hearing technology can affect larger groups of people. So I’ve dipped my toes into this now, and I’m doing some consulting with some really interesting companies who are able to do advanced how we do hearing loss prevention advanced how we do hearing testing in these non clinical settings, or non audiology clinical settings, one group that I’m working with, if it’s okay to name them, sound trace, which is able to do this higher level, sort of a machine learning almost algorithm, which I don’t fully understand what that means. But bringing, bringing the understanding of how the audio test and the noise monitoring for an individual worker can combine together to create an understanding of risk, far beyond simple calculations, we can actually make it personalized and accurate for the individual, which means more impactful, which means we’re actually protecting people and saving people’s hearing. The other group that I’m working with very closely tuned, the one that does the tele visits, is working on some, you know, advanced practices for how to do occupational hearing conservation program management, and make, make it available that the program managers can actually see high level details and make decisions based on metrics that they never had access to before based on old technology. And suddenly, with all this data in front of them, they can say, Oh, we actually need to address this, we need to address that. It takes a takes so much burden out of those who want to do really, really good, but don’t have the resources or the knowledge base, presented with them. Take the resource side out of it, present the solutions, and then all they have to do is put boots on the ground and deal with it in the moment. It reduces barriers increases accessibility, and suddenly we can actually start improving the hearing loss prevention programs in the in the US and in the world. Yeah,
Dave Kemp
I think that’s a really good point. And like, you know, one of the things that really stood out when when I had the conversation with Mike Santucci was the when we started talking about sort of like the collective effort here, and the roles and the responsibilities. And I remember he was saying about how, you know, it’s not enough, like within the, you know, take like a, your, your standard run of the mill concert. You know, like, I think that there’s just so much public education that still needs to be done about. I mean, we, in every other aspect of our of public health, there’s like so much like education and messaging and our hearing, healthcare seems to just be, you know, maybe it’s coming down the line, like it’s just a, it’s a laggard, or something like that, but it’s bizarre how there’s so little attention to that. And it’s an interesting kind of thought experiment to think about how that could change, you know, like, would we, you know, from the actual venue itself, having signage that displays, you know, like, the need to this is a loud environment, you’ll want to wear earplugs in this setting, and then have those for sale or something like that. I think, like, apples actually really interesting. Like I wear an Apple Watch. And so, you know, having a sound level meter in there is, I think doing a tremendous service for people to realize, like, Whoa, this is a really loud environment. Like I tell the story sometimes, but I was at the dentist and my watch was going off because of the drill. And I showed the lady and she’s not wearing any hearing protection. I’m like, you work in a hazardous level of noise every single day, you should wear some ear protection and give your patients and your protection too. But again, it’s just one of those things that you know, and even in like an ancillary medical professional like that they don’t fully grasp the thing here. So there is like so much work to be done. I think it which I think you can look at If you’re a professional or whatever is like that, that equates to a lot of opportunity. But I mean, I just see this as being something where, and I’ll be curious to hear from you like, even within the musicians that you’re seeing and stuff like that, like, when they’re coming to you. What what’s their experience been like with hearing conservation? You know, are they wearing hearing protection? Have they been given an education on like, what’s actually going on? Besides, it’s loud. Because that was a, that was a point that Mike made to was, again, all of this is just to say that, like, I think that, you know, there’s just a lot of opportunity here, because of how much progress still needs to be made.
Frank Wartinger, Au.D.
I agree completely. And I’m so glad that you brought up Mike again, so we can circle back to him, he is such a, he would hate me for saying this, but like really an inspiration for how we can, how we can practice ethically how we can focus on the big picture, focus on the meaning behind our care, even in the face of a sometimes chaotic work environment. I mean, we’re seeing people in very strange environments, venues being not the least of them. But seeing folks in this unregulated on standardized setting, it takes a moral compass to keep the focus right on what we’re supposed to be doing and having sort of ethical code that has not been really written down. And he is a wonderful, you know, guidepost for all of us, because he’s, he’s very, very clear about that ethical code and that moral compass. And again, he would hate me for saying all of this, but I really do blame him for music audiology, being on everybody’s minds right now, in our conferences being you know, something that is even showing up on your podcasts. Because it’s his, you know, it’s, it’s his genuineness that people respond to? Yeah, because he’s got Yes,
Dave Kemp
he was, I just think about, like, just some of the stories he told, both on air and off. I mean, I think it’s, I, I just think about, in my eyes, you know, who could be a better advocate for hearing conservation than the musicians. And so I think that there’s such an important segment of customers, you know, I don’t think it’s about the glitz and the glamour of doing business with music professionals, which, let’s be clear, I think is actually really cool. Like going to a show, and getting to know the musicians like, that’s really cool. But I think that the way more exciting aspect of that is, the more musicians that you can get on board with this idea of understanding the importance of, of protecting their hearing, and, and then just having that be part of the culture in the music scene of, you know, it’s not like frowned upon to wear earplugs in your ears at the show, you know, it’s little cultural, things like that, that I think you need to, I think it needs to almost be ushered in by the musicians that can sort of lend their coolness, if you will, to it. And so I think that like, Mike’s a very, very humble guy. But I get the sense that one of the biggest contributions he’s made is he has more or less gotten the implicit endorsement of a lot of these big time musicians. And over the last few decades, that’s now sort of, that’s sort of cascaded into more musicians, more audiologists that are facilitating this kind of thing. It’s just growing. And I again, think it’s such an important segment, because I think it’s the kind of segment that can usher in cultural change in the sense that where, again, people start to look at protecting your ears at a show as being something that you do, and it’s not really even an afterthought, and then that carries into other parts of life.
Frank Wartinger, Au.D.
I 100%. And so, I mean, your your direct question before was musicians, and if they are, what is their like, level of knowledge, understanding expertise in this area, and it has grown dramatically, dramatically as grown in my 15 something years now seeing musicians as an RD, you know, from the audiology perspective, there is a difference where before, they were very much like me saying, like, on an Oh, like, I put some foam earplugs. I mean, I think back to this a lot, this particular one, but I put foam earplugs out at the front of a venue that I used to work at. Because I thought, well, this is loud, right? So let’s protect people. So let’s put some foam earplugs out. That was a that was what I thought I thought I did a good job. I gave myself a gold sticker for that effort. But that’s not a hearing conservation program that’s not hearing loss prevention. That’s just that’s throwing band aids at, you know, at a terrible situation. There’s a house fire throw band aids at it. That’s basically the solution that I was doing, which is so sad water. Yeah, I mean, it wasn’t effective, and it wasn’t helpful. And now I see people so much further down the path towards some people just literally During these visits, lecturing to me about what they’ve been doing and how they’ve been protecting themselves. And and frankly, I’m getting ideas of how to handle certain odd situations. I just had a guy I hope this doesn’t doxim Who does? A gamelan or Kamala got Milan gamelan orchestra the like big, basically brass, like xylophone. instruments that just are loud and clanking, it sounds amazing and personal, because saying like, this is too loud for me. And he taught me a little bit of how to protect people, the next person that comes along, who does that I’m going to know a little bit more about how to protect them, because this person’s thought about it for years, who turned him on to it? I don’t know. But I’m also going to blame Michael Santucci for that, probably whoever turned him on to hearing protection also turned, you know, was influenced maybe by somebody that Michael talked to. So I completely agree. I’m seeing a huge change, huge culture shift. And it’s coming about because more people are willing to talk about it. Both pro musicians, you know, the list of pro musicians who are out spoken and willing to share their hearing damage has grown hugely exponentially. And that’s a wonderful thing. Now, obviously, nobody needs to Doc’s themselves and come out with their own public health information and share that. But that that’s partially what spurred on me doing my podcast is I had enough people who said like, essentially, how can I help spread this information? Because they became such avid apostles. Now, that’s not the right word believers. Yeah. They really wanted to say, hey, if I could talk to 15 year old me and stop 15 year old me from getting the ear ear damage that got me to this point, what would I want to say? And is there a platform for that? So I’ve been trying to make that platform? But really, it does come back down to people like Michael, even starting this conversation? Yeah, for
Dave Kemp
sure. So with the podcast, you know, as fellow podcaster, I feel like you can, you can relate that, you know, one of the one of my favorite parts of it are, it’s just meeting the guests and building relationships that way. You’ve been doing this now for what a year and a half, what what really stands out to you of the episodes that you’ve done, whether you want to talk about individual episodes, individual people, or just the broad themes of you know, what your takeaways are of doing your podcast, which, you know, I think is also a very niche focused thing, which is, there are pros and cons to that. But I think one of the biggest pros is that if you’re a, if you’re a curious person about what you’re podcasting about, it’s just like one giant Alice in Wonderland rabbit hole, and you just keep going further and further down into it. I always joke that I think I’m, I’m quickly becoming the most knowledgeable, lay person about audiology. That’s not an audiologist. And it’s largely because of the conversations I have on this podcast. So what’s kind of been your experience?
Frank Wartinger, Au.D.
Again, you made me fell on my chair. I’m at a standing desk. So that’s, that’s an idiom, but you basically made me fall out of my chair. When you told me that the last the last time I had listened to your shows I had, we’ve had conversations and then I said, Well, you know, as an audiologist, he said, I’m not like that’d be like two birds flying up in the air and one being like, well, as a fellow bird. I’m a dog like, Yeah, I think you’re flying. Know, it humbles the rest of us that we should really I should read more papers. To answer your question more directly. I think I’ve been surprised by a lot of things. The biggest thing I’ve been surprised by is who’s the audience? We thought we were making a show for musicians. And we thought we were making a show for audience members and music enthusiasts. I hate using that word, but People who care about the artists perspective, either from the stage because they they’ve been there or because it’s interesting to hear, it’s always interesting to hear musicians talk, right? They’re very interesting people, let’s put a microphone in front of them and then stand back. And it’s always going to be interesting. What’s odd is I feel like most of our response, positive and and constructive has been from the audiology community. And I honestly didn’t expect that. So we’ve taken a slight turn and how we produce shows very early on, I had a very simple formula of get a person on who’s had something happen to their ears, and who has something interesting to talk about it, and let them talk. And in my show, I like to share their music as well, because I feel like not hearing the music of a musician is like seeing half of a person’s face, it’s very incomplete, you don’t get the nuance of what they’re talking about. Like once, you know, I had a good example, at one of our first episodes, was a drummer who plays in a really loud band, and he’s a really loud drummer. And I can say he’s a loud drummer, or I can play you a recording of the loudest drums you’ve ever heard. Which one gets the point across better? So I use Yeah, and you mentioned this earlier, maybe it was before we hit record, but why we use so much music in the or how we use music and in talking years, and it’s really, it’s because of that, because I want nuance and clarity as far as who this person is. And that’s the best way to, to understand a musician is just to listen, listen to what they put out. And the second thing is, I find that I want to hear my voice less. In these episodes, I want to pull out my commentary and my personality from the show as much as possible, just leave enough there so that you know, people don’t forget that I disappeared, or don’t think that they disappeared. But I can replace most of what I said, with their music. And it basically gets the point across much better than anything I could have said. So if I if I had my own devices, I wouldn’t be the host. I don’t, I’m not a natural host, I’m not a natural, get in front of the mic and be the person who’s in the spotlight, which is why I play keyboards and guitar and I stand in the background. And I prefer that I but I felt like this just had to happen. And there was nobody else wanted to do it. So I’m doing it. And now I’ve got a co host, which is fantastic. Dr. Juan Vasquez, he’s an audiologist in Chicago. And he is really, I gotta blame him for this show actually continuing because as a fellow podcaster, you know, there is a grind to it, there’s a grind, it can get to
Dave Kemp
peaks and valleys to for sure, go through periods where you don’t really want to do it anymore. So it’s really important to have a co host or even just somebody that’s like, I don’t have a co host. But I’ve I’ve got a couple people that have been like, longtime repeat guests that every now and then I’ll have to bring one of them on just to kind of like, you know, just change it back up a little bit and give me almost like a break a breath of fresh air before getting back into it. But you know, the interesting thing for me and not to like just make this about me, but I bet you can relate to this is that sometimes when I’m feeling maybe like, like, least motivated by my show, and everything, something will change and come along, and then I’ll get really interested in that. And again, it’s the Alice in Wonderland rabbit hole where you go down something, and that leads to like, a totally new facet and tangent. And then like from there, it’s just I don’t know, I’ve been doing this long enough now to know that like, you know, so long as you want to continue the name of the game is just kind of keep going. And I think that because like you’ll, there’s so much serendipity when it comes to a podcast, whether it’s like determining who your next guest is going to be the next topic that you really wanted to discuss. So much of it for me has been a really small aside in the last episode where I’m like, wait, that was a really interesting point, who’s the person that I should have wanted, like, really flesh that out? So I feel like that’s a challenge for people that are producing content in general is like you hit these walls, but I think that it’s just part of the process. Trust the process. You know that in Philly?
Frank Wartinger, Au.D.
Yep. Trust the process. I say that more often than I actually understand what that reference means. I’m not a sporty person, but you got to you got to trust the process. I couldn’t agree more. And as long as you have something. It’s not about having something interesting to say it’s having an interesting topic to explore. And there’s nothing more interesting to audiologists. than hearing in ears and sound, and there’s nothing more interesting to musicians than hearing ears and sound. And so we’re just trying to push those two things together and see what, you know, see what fires we can make with that? And, I mean, why don’t I we’re just having a production meeting earlier this week, where we look back at our list of potential guests and potential topics, and it is just never ending. And that excites me, and exhausts me to equal measure. So that’s why having a partner in crime in this is so important because you you, you have to have a sounding board to be able to say, Hey, are we going far enough? Are we are we do we need to take a pause. And keeping that motivation going, there’s always something more interesting around the corner with with these shows. I mean, I think you hit it that like, there’s, there’s just another kind of facet to pull out. In my position, a lot of our guests come from patients that I’ve seen, and when a person is talking to me, and I’m gonna say this and regret it, because then if there’s any future patients who hear this, they’re gonna be like, Oh, I know how to get on the show. But if they, if they’re talking to me, and I hear if I can, like, I’m not a journalist, but you’re a journalist, right? If you can hear that story in your head of like, Man, I just want to let this person run for hour in front of a microphone,
Dave Kemp
you immediately know you’re like, oh, this person would be a fantastic guest. Exactly. And I bet you get that with the patients that you’re seeing are like I do, and then there’s other times three and view women’s perspective.
Frank Wartinger, Au.D.
There’s definitely times where the story is too personal, the story is nothing that they want to share. And that’s fine. I’ve had guests actually pull out from being guests on the show, because they just said, Hey, look, you know what, really personal, I don’t want to share it. Totally fine. Nobody has to share it. But I’ve had other people who said, I don’t want to, but I need to, because it’s really important to me and my community that this gets shared. And then now we’ve had a lot of guests who are audiologists, engineers, Michael’s and Tucci was on an episode, people who are kind of adjacent to that core, my what I think of as kind of a core guest of a person with a story, and music. Who we can expand this conversation. And now we’re even talking about having music, audiology panels of just music, audiologists come on and talk about the topics, because apparently this is something that people want to hear. And I’m overjoyed to be able to share it with them.
Dave Kemp
That’s awesome. I want to close here and just kind of wrap up with looking to the future looking, you know, you said you’ve you’re currently you know, you’re teaching classes of 30 plus students in some of these classes, with your own personal experience, you know, when you first kind of came into this, and again, it’s like it’s nice to have this conversation directly after the one with Mike Santa Tucci, because, you know, he was sort of like the first generation of these music audiologists. And then so now you’ve got Heather and Shannon, and you know, some of these different people that were sort of write that next crop, and then I feel like you in some of these, like this next generation three, where you’re like, 2.5, it just seems like it keeps growing. And I’d be really curious to hear about what the what’s the mindset of the young professional today with regard to this space? How are they looking at it based on your interactions with them? Like, is there some aspect to this that they’re gravitating toward, that they’re looking at and saying, whether it’s their sustainability there, or this jives with what I want to do, where it marries musicians and music, music, and then audiology. I’m just curious of what you feel is maybe at the heart of why there seems to be more of a push in this direction within the next crop of grads.
Frank Wartinger, Au.D.
Man, that is such a good question. And I like I like that you’re bringing it back to that because I think early on, when I started working in towards doing a music audiology business. I was mentored a little bit with a lot. Let me rephrase that mentored a lot by Brian fleiger. Over in Boston, great guy, great friend. He was running a musician’s Hearing Program and I did my fourth year up with him at the children’s hospital. He mentored me and showed me the ropes on kind of the business and the patient care of music audiology. And What I kind of took away and emphasized to anybody who had asked about their ask that question was that music audiology will always be a niche, and always be a side hustle, because of just kind of the the number of folks that you have as far as a pool. And what my answer is now it’s changing dramatically, because now I’m talking with folks, either students, my own students in grad program, or I meet with a lot of students or early professionals at conferences. And now that we have telepractice now that we have more awareness in the audiology community, there’s more demand for our time and needs, and more respect in that sense, too. I don’t think that that’s the case anymore. I really think that this can be for those people who are really devoted to this a full time work just like it is for the Heather’s and me and and a couple other folks. Lisa Tenenbaum on the West Coast. There’s a handful of us who this is what we do now. And that is an option. And I don’t know if that was so much an option before a viable reachable goal option, but I do believe is the career path. Now. As far as why I don’t think that it’s coming from the music community. I think it’s a spiral, right? The the Michaels of the world are educating the musicians, musicians are not asking for our care, and the local audiologists. That sounds derogatory, the your general practitioner audiologist is now receiving a whole lot of more influx of requests, right? And looking towards things like AAA, asking, Hey, is there a practice guideline on this, and Michael led our task force to write a clinical consensus document and 2020 to put it out there so that there is some guidance, and it’s not just shooting in the dark anymore. And you know, we have people like Marshall Chaisson who’s written numerous textbooks and guidance and has a blog about how to do this stuff well, and efficiently and effectively and care about the musician and I think we’re at a, we’re at a bit of a crossroads, right, like an inflection point where we can start seeing this be more viable for for a new for a new audiologist coming into the field, this becomes a more viable option. And I’m so excited about that. I really am,
Dave Kemp
right. I mean, I think you’re right there that, you know, it is a spiral. And I think like one thing sort of precipitates the next where you get somebody like, you know, this really influential character like Michael, that I think everything just sort of dovetails into the next you then have all more musicians are interested in this. And that means that more audiologists are getting inquiries about this. And so then they’re looking for specialty training. And I’m sure like, you know, one of the things we talked about with him is his sense of phonics gold circle program, which I think is incredibly important. Again, I just look at this and say, you know, it’s not just young people, it’s just this notion of being the Forever student and having the humility to like, keep learning and just say, like, I can do more, because I think at the end of the day, it’s just gonna, it’s gonna behoove you to have something that caters to this increasing demand. And again, I kind of think that that is full circle to the reason there’s more demand is because there’s more awareness in the music community now of how, how severe This is, when you see these stories coming out from guys like Huey Lewis, and, you know, it’s like, I think that there is a level of, of, of, of fear, almost of like, you know, I need to take this thing serious. And I don’t know if that’s like kind of always been the case, or if maybe that is generationally changing where younger musicians are understanding the severity of this and wanting to be very proactive early on. But again, I think that then leads to these conversations that are being had and that’s probably where you’re seeing all of this kind of trickle down into this new increasing demand of the at the like, you know, emerging graduate level of wanting to specialize in this.
Frank Wartinger, Au.D.
There’s a third layer to the spiral to that has changed, which is the technology is now there to support the care. So back in the 70s. For instance, you had people like Pete Townsend is a good example of a loud rocker, who was at the forefront of technology and was able to make louder sounds than other people could with their guitar. Great, awesome. Go for it. We didn’t know the risks. So what’s the harm to it? And hearing protection devices weren’t available that sounded anywhere decent to musicians. So great point. I don’t even I don’t even see that as non starter. It’s a non starter. So at that point, it’s like, the fact that Pete Townsend now is an advocate for hearing, loss prevention and discussing his own tinnitus and hearing loss. It’s not a failed system. It’s the system evolving and improving. And the fact that now, you know, Michaels company and a bunch of other advances at a melodic creating earplugs that actually work on stage for the vast majority of musicians in ear monitors have improved our ability to test in strange environments, my audiometer fits in my backpack, so I can go anywhere and do diagnostic hearing tests. That was not the case before. And so our abilities to attack, I mean, telepractice, our abilities to do this has finally caught up with the need to do this. Maybe that’s the best way of saying it.
Dave Kemp
Yeah. No, that’s a great point. I think you’re spot on there. Because the, the, my mind, you know, I think one of the biggest challenges that like a guy like Michael probably had to face was, how do you say, You just seem like such a, like the Fun Police where you’re saying, a musician, the thing that you love, that’s your livelihood, I’m going to come in and tell you that you need to like turn it down, because it’s not safe. And I think that, in the past, people probably just perceive that as that was going to, like, distort and tarnish, the way that it actually sounded, and the whole experience and everything. And I think that like through his work, and I think through this progression of time, where you have had all this innovation, where you really do have the ability now to sort of preserve the integrity of the music, but just do it in a way that’s safe. That is dramatically different than what existed when he started. So again, kudos to all the giants that came before us that like everybody is kind of standing on the shoulders. Because like I think that it’s whatever we think is difficult now, like imagine how challenging selling somebody on that concept was back when you were using vinyl. And that was the only option. And like, just imagine the, you know, kind of the effect that that does. I can imagine he was met with some pretty fierce opposition initially, he said he was laughed out of the first room that he was like, exhibiting that.
Frank Wartinger, Au.D.
Yep. And I think that, you know, we really have to thank those pioneers, let’s call it that, who had the audacity to just kind of push through forward with that, because I look at myself in the mirror and I say I have a passion for this. But do I have entrepreneurial audacity to push forward and headwinds like that? Probably not. Which is to say, you know, if you want to topple me, all you have to do is just, you know, blow hard wind and man I’m gonna fall over. But in truth, like we all have a limit to how much we can push and how much we can change, literally the culture and I think it takes a certain amount of healthy the word arrogance gets a bad rap, but like a certain healthy arrogance to say, No, this is right. No, this is important.
Dave Kemp
Owning your expertise, owning your domain. Yeah, no more about this than anyone. And I don’t think that’s arrogance. I think that’s just subject matter expertise. Yep.
Frank Wartinger, Au.D.
You had Kathleen Wallace on. And she talked a lot about this word expert. And I got really into that part of the conversation because it touches on how we present ourselves and the circles back to almost everything we’ve talked about of you can present yourself at the top of your license and realize that the skills that we have as hearing healthcare knowledgeable professionals goes beyond it includes the patient care, I don’t want to let go of that includes the one on one patient care, but it can go beyond that and we can spread our spread our information as wide as possible. And I think that that’s where, where audiology needs to keep pushing itself. You know, it’s, it’s not a crowded space. That’s the only thing I want to say there’s there needs to be more people and all of these things that we’ve talked about. This isn’t a club that has a entrance fee or any high barriers. Not a crowded space session. Free admission, please come on over. I’ll bring I’ll bring the pizza.
Dave Kemp
Yeah, no, it’s you know, this is is a perfect place to wrap because I think like, you’re very similar. And Kathleen is like the poster child of the kinds of people that I feel like, I’m so fortunate to have met through this podcast. Because, for me, you know, having like a strong conviction that this industry is going to continue to do well, in the future. It all stems from the kinds of interactions that I’ve had with people like you people like her where I can see now it’s becoming more and more like in focus of how you could successfully have a business. That’s not the traditional private practice, but it’s like the 2023 version of it, the millennial version of it, where, you know, it’s like, okay, so and I think it’s so cool that she’s doing something very different. But it’s still, it’s a different take on everything that she’s doing is like the methodology of it is so modernized. And again, I’m not saying that it’s superior or anything like that, it just lends itself to, like totally different ways in which you can bring value to the market, and therefore you can like build a business around it. And the same thing with what you’re doing around hearing conservation is, for me, like, that’s just so encouraging to hear that there are multiple ways, these are just two examples, there are lots and lots. And I’m going to keep trying to flesh them out on this podcast of like, if I were a young professional getting started, or if I were looking for a career change in this, I think there are many options available to people. But I think it boils down to identifying what you are naturally suited for, and you know, kind of like it plays to your strengths. But I think that the most encouraging thing is that the there’s so much more nuance in hearing healthcare than just like, selling and administering hearing aids, that’s obviously a huge part of it. But like, there’s so many other revenue generation possibilities, and also just ways that they’re the audiologist can remain relevant, I think, like far into the future that has nothing to do with hearing aids, per se, that’s just one facet of what they’re doing. But there’s so much more to that. And I think that’s kind of the goal right now is like to kind of almost rebrand in the eyes of the public to say that this is, this is the medical professional for all things. Ears, which we now know, like, there’s a, you know, so much relationship between the ears and the brain, and, you know, so it’s like a, it’s like an evolving thing that I think just continues to shed more and more light and illustrate the importance of this professional, I think there’s tremendous opportunity here, but a lot of it has to come down to like people, sort of Lewis and Clark in it and like figuring out like, alright, like, let’s go down this route and flesh it out and make sure that this thing there, you know, there’s no will be stung that way
Frank Wartinger, Au.D.
are how to use them to your advantage. And you know, there’s there’s been pioneers, especially in music audiology, who didn’t have a chance to share their, their pioneering. I can name them if I wanted to, but they don’t get enough credit for that. And partially because there wasn’t platforms like your platform. So it again, it brings it full circle back to our conversation. It’s a spiral, that the dissemination of knowledge, dissemination of information, the public awareness that you’re creating, helps prompt this kind of movement forward. Because hopefully, there’s a grad student who’s listening who goes, I’m going to change my change my path slightly, because I just heard that I’m gonna reach out the
Dave Kemp
perfect segue, not me close here. As we close here, where can people connect with you? What’s the best way to to link up? If that might be interested?
Frank Wartinger, Au.D.
Yep, I am very accessible by email. You can go to my website, Ear Mark H. C, as in hearing conservation.com. My email address is Frank, that’s me at EarMarkhc.com. You can also find information about our show called talking years, so you can just search it in any of your podcast players. We are trying to be more active on the social medias. But unlike Kathleen Wallace, I am not a natural at that. And so I think if you want to reach out the best ways are probably through the website.
Dave Kemp
Well, man, awesome. Well, thank you so much, Frank. I’ve really enjoyed the conversation getting to know you a little bit better in learning more about what you’re doing. So thanks for everybody who tuned in here to the end. We will chat with you next time. Cheers.
