OPINION EDITORIAL | Should AuD Programs Increase Business Education Opportunities?

By Donald W. Nielsen

This article is a part of the July/August 2022, Volume 34, Number 4, Audiology Today issue. 

While serving on jury duty, I had lunch with a fellow juror. I mentioned we enjoyed cooking, and my wife and I had discussed opening a restaurant. It was a topic about which he was well informed. He said 90 percent of new restaurants fail even though excellent cooks skilled in food preparation and presentation created them. 

The main reason is these new mom-and-pop entrepreneurs had no grasp of basic business concepts. How many dinners must you serve a night to make a profit? How many tables do you need to serve that many dinners? How many square feet of space do you need for those tables? (This was decades before the internet and regular delivery service.) 

Our conversation did not even get into the health regulations, insurance, food procurement, human resources practices, customer demographics, and other mandatory business considerations. There is more to running a restaurant than cooking and serving meals. And there is more to running a clinic than meeting patients’ needs.

AuD programs are often designed to prepare students to be clinicians but not to manage an audiology clinic. They may operate on the myth that if you understand patient care, you understand how a clinic that performs patient care should operate. But these are two different things. In an era of increasing business challenges and rapid change, if the desire is for our students to become leaders of clinics, departments, and professional organizations, this lack of business acumen is a significant shortcoming. 

Shouldn’t we be graduating students who learn the fundamentals of good clinical practice while also understanding what it takes to manage a successful clinic professionally? My generation “grew up” in academia learning business was evil. But times are changing, and even university departments and clinics are experiencing a greater emphasis on increasing revenue and making a profit. 

Incoming students are more entrepreneurial and want to reap more significant benefits from their expensive AuD education. Our programs should help them achieve this goal. Usually, we see intelligence as the ability to think and learn. However, there is another set of cognitive skills in a rapidly changing world that might matter more: the ability to rethink and unlearn. AuD programs must acknowledge what is happening and evolve.