2023 Early Hearing Detection & Intervention Conference
March 5-7, 2023 • Cincinnati, OH
3/05/2019 | 3:45 PM - 4:45 PM | Excuse Me While I Change My Hat | International B/C
Excuse Me While I Change My Hat
I am not deaf. No one in my family is deaf. None of my friends are deaf. I am a pediatrician who was trained very little, if any, on deafness. Expecting a baby with my wife in 2002, deafness did not come to mind, even though I think we knew that our baby would have a newborn hearing screening. After that first baby was born, my wife and I were thrust into a world that we should have been comfortable in, being a pediatrician and a speech pathologist. However, those hats had to be quickly thrown away as we now became grieving, nervous, anxious parents who wondered if our child would ever know how to speak, communicate, or even function with his deafness. We learned about the world of audiologists, hearing booths, behavioral audiometry, Early Intervention, developmental therapy, speech therapy, deaf schools, mainstreaming, individualized education plans, ling sounds, and on and on. With our third son, we were then put in a world of "severe-to-profound deafness," and entered the world of cochlear implants, sign language, and deaf culture. This should have been easy for us "professionals," but it wasn't by any means. We understand this now. When the opportunity to become Illinois' AAP EHDI Chapter Champion came along, I jumped at the opportunity. Now my job is to educate providers on how to help parents through this often-unanticipated process. Through this presentation, I will talk about my "hat swtich," and how I learned to look at the issue of newborn hearing loss from numerous perspectives - perspectives from which I never thought I'd need to see.
- Present my family's journey into the unexpected world of newborn hearing loss
- Emphasize the need for parent support from any professional involved in EHDI
- Support the spread of knowledge of EHDI to those wearing any type of
Presentation:
18878_10444DanielMorra.pdf
Handouts:
Handout is not Available
Transcripts:
18878_10444DanielMorra.doc
Presenters/Authors
Daniel Morra
(), Right from the Start Pediatrics, doc@drmorra.com;
Born and raised in New Jersey and trained in New Jersey, Pennsylvania and Delaware, Dr. Morra was in private pediatric practice in New Jersey until 2002. He moved to Illinois to the St. Louis area in 2002 and opened his own private practice in 2004. After his wife, Amy, and he had three boys, two of whom are deaf, he decided to make it a personal mission to educate children, parents, and health care providers about the importance of newborn hearing screening and its follow-up. He became Illinois AAP EHDI Chapter Champion in 2015.
ASHA DISCLOSURE:
Financial -
Nonfinancial -