Ear Diseases and Hearing Specialists

The Ear Centre at Green Pas­tures Hos­pi­tal is an excel­lent purpose-built facil­ity for treat­ment and reha­bil­i­ta­tion of all adult and child ear related con­di­tions. Ear disease and deaf­ness are very common in Nepal due to the com­bi­na­tion of poverty, dust, wood smoke, viral and other infec­tious dis­eases and inter­mar­riage. Increas­ing urban­i­sa­tion is leading to more noise expo­sure and use of oto­toxic drugs. Lack of knowl­edge in the com­mu­nity and late treat­ment exac­er­bate these problems.

The Ear Centre was con­ceived as a hos­pi­tal with all facil­i­ties but impor­tantly also as a train­ing centre. We offer audio­met­ric testing, hearing aid fitting, speech therapy, medical out patients and a wide range of ear surgery. We would love to recruit those with a passion to serve Christ and dis­ad­van­taged people in this area, and who have suit­able pro­fes­sional qualifications.

We want to develop train­ing pack­ages for vol­un­teer and para­med­ical ear care workers for the hos­pi­tal and for the com­mu­nity. We hope to start ‘at risk’ testing of new­borns in local hos­pi­tals, run train­ings for com­mu­nity medical assis­tants and general doctors, train ENT spe­cial­ist and upgrade oto­log­i­cal ser­vices gen­er­ally, in our region and further west. We hope to develop a cochlear implant service. We will need a great deal of support and outside input in order to see these needs met and local ser­vices become sustainable.

We are looking for:
A Speech Ther­a­pist – to work, in par­tic­u­lar, with hard-of-hearing or pro­foundly deaf chil­dren. There may also be oppor­tu­ni­ties to develop this and swal­low­ing ser­vices, working with adults having neu­ro­log­i­cal defects attend­ing the spinal and pal­lia­tive care sec­tions of GP hos­pi­tal. You may require a masters degree in a branch of the speciality.

A Spe­cial­ist Ear Surgeon – with a desire to drive the service forward, devel­op­ing new avenues such as the newborn screen­ing, local and remote com­mu­nity ear care work, includ­ing ear camps. This will require close coop­er­a­tion with the lead­er­ship of the Health Ser­vices Team at GP and within INF, as well as regional and national heath ser­vices. It will be chal­leng­ing and require per­sis­tence, patience and time! Oppor­tu­ni­ties abound for devel­op­ing new areas of service. You will need good teach­ing and organ­i­sa­tional skills in order to develop regional, national and perhaps inter­na­tional courses. An ability to mentor local col­leagues to take over the service and meet the spe­cific needs of Nepali people is also required.

A Health Edu­ca­tion­al­ist – with an inter­est in ear con­di­tions and deaf­ness, to develop vol­un­teer and para­med­ical ear care train­ings, develop mate­ri­als and tech­niques for health edu­ca­tion within the Ear Centre and local com­mu­nity, includ­ing schools. This will require par­tic­u­lar cul­tural sen­si­tiv­ity and excel­lent com­mu­ni­ca­tion skills.

An Audi­o­log­i­cal Sci­en­tist – with a par­tic­u­lar desire to develop spe­cial­ist areas such as advanced audi­o­log­i­cal testing like ABR and OAE with a view to a full implant pro­gramme. There will be oppor­tu­ni­ties to develop areas such as an audiome­ter cal­i­bra­tion service, periph­eral hearing aid repair and sup­plies service, and perhaps small busi­ness enter­prises. You will engage with local mater­nity and pae­di­atric units and offer audi­o­log­i­cal train­ing courses.

Others – If you have exper­tise and vision for this area then we want to hear from you! We have a great team and a desire to serve the often ignored deaf pop­u­la­tion and those with chronic, and some­times lethal, ear diseases.