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Why Choose Baycrest Hearing Services

  • Our experienced audiologists have Master’s degrees or Doctor of Audiology (AuD), are registered with the College of Audiologists and Speech Language Pathologists of Ontario, and have a clinical focus in the identification and management of hearing loss.
  • Our clients have a high rate of success with hearing aids and achieving their goals.
  • We work with all hearing aid manufacturers to offer you the best solution at the best price.
  • As a not-for-profit clinic, all proceeds from sales are invested back into the hearing services, research, and education programs we provide to our clients.
  • We offer support, counselling and follow-up care to help our clients successfully manage their hearing loss.
  • We are involved in clinical research investigating the relationship between hearing loss and dementia, and in the development of innovative service delivery models.
  • A Conversation with Dr. Noyek

    April 27, 2017.

    Dr. Noyek talks to Marilyn Reed, Audiologist, about how his wireless hearing aid technology helped him during a recent surgical procedure. 

    Marilyn: “Hi Dr. Noyek, it’s good to see you!” 

    Dr. Noyek: “Can you imagine what Baycrest Audiology has just done for me by way of service? I really appreciate how my hearing aids helped me during a recent surgical procedure. Now as you know I’ve been responsible for the growth and development of colleagues like you and others of the Baycrest Audiology clinic, going back to the late 1960’s. That’s a lot of history when we started with nothing. But I have gotten older and sometimes when we get older we get a little bit infirm and sometimes we have to be sure that the infirmity doesn’t get in the way of what we want to do. So, I’m still in here in the Baycrest clinic, every Wednesday morning when I am capable but I got into some hot water about six years ago. I became ill in a major way and this ultimately led to my needing to have some very urgent heart surgery. 16 days ago I had to have my aortic heart valve replaced with a procedure done through a blood vessel in the groin. It was quite an experience because that also necessitated having a pacemaker. But what was so overwhelmingly remarkable about this experience was that it had to be done under local anesthia because I have a couple of cancers that don’t allow me to have general anesthetic. And so they did this procedure with local anesthetic at the UHN and here I am sitting with Marilyn talking about my experience and how having the very best in hearing health care enabled my surgeons to give me instructions that enabled me to come through this procedure in the most amazing way. 

    Marilyn: “ So, how important, Dr. Noyek, is it for patients to be able to communicate with their doctors when they are going through procedures like this and in health care in general? 

    Dr. Noyek: “Its everything. If you don’t communicate well with your physicians, you’ve lost the whole point of the mission. Because the essence of hearing health is to restore the patient to good hearing but the family physician and others involved must know the patient has a hearing disability. Now not all hearing disabilities are created equal and some are characterized by a loss of discrimination, the ability to hear sound clearly and that can make it difficult not only for patients to talk to their physicians but to talk to their families who they are going to need to support them in these very intense times in their lives. So good communication is essential to everything we do in this world.” 

    Marilyn: “Absolutely, I completely agree. Can you be specific about how your devices helped you in this particular situation?” 

    Dr. Noyek: “That’s a wonderful question. Now, I’m hard of hearing. I have hearing loss that comes with, hate to say it, getting older, but we all do, but with that I lost some of my ability to recognize sounds clearly. Now, I have a set of hearing aids that I have had now for a while. I’m very comfortable with them. But there is some new technology linked to these hearing aids that enables a speaker, in this case my surgeon, to speak into a microphone that transmits their voice directly into my hearing aids wirelessly by Bluetooth. So, if you go back to what I said in the beginning – can you imagine what a boon that is to someone who is hearing impaired and is getting some lifesaving instructions in a critical moment on a surgical pathway!” 

    Marilyn: “That’s a wonderful example of what modern wireless hearing aid technology can do. So, what advice would you give to our patients, Dr. Noyek?” 

    Dr. Noyek: “The first thing I would say is that you have to be positive. No matter what the nature of the problem, you have to got to stay positive. Now some of our patients our getting older, they’re losing some of their cognitive capacity. Having good hearing support can help to delay that process, and be very helpful to patients and their families. So my advice would be, don’t be afraid to seek out hearing help. Now, hearing aids are expensive, we know that, but they pay tremendous dividends in life capacity. When you can sit around the table with your family and enjoy a family conversation or enjoy the pleasure of grandchildren, it’s pretty hard to put a dollar sign on that. So, I would tell patients to think very carefully about this issue and if they really want to get the very best in hearing health care, its right here on their door step at Baycrest! 

    Marilyn: “Thanks Dr. Noyek, that means a lot coming from you!”

    – Dr. Noyek


About Us

Our Team

 
Debbie Ostroff
Debbie Ostroff

Debbie Ostroff received her Master’s degree in Audiology from the University of Ottawa in 2002. She began her career working at The Children’s Hospital of Eastern Ontario in Ottawa before moving to Toronto in 2004, where she worked at North York General Hospital. She currently works at Baycrest Hearing Services, where she has been since 2007. Her main areas of interest are amplification (hearing aids and assistive devices) and aural rehabilitation for elderly clients with cognitive impairment. She has extensive experience in diagnostic audiology, hearing aid fitting procedures and clinical audiology training of students.

 
Debbie Ostroff
Brooke Harris

Brooke Harris is the newest audiologist with Baycrest Hearing Services. Brooke received her Master’s degree in Audiology from the University of Western Ontario in 2022. She feels fortunate to have had the opportunity to complete her final clinical placement at Baycrest as an audiology student. Brooke started her career as an audiologist in Orillia, Ontario before rejoining the Baycrest Hearing Services team in 2023. She is passionate about providing patient-centered care to support individuals in meeting their hearing healthcare needs and communication goals.

 
Sylvia C
Sylvia Ciechanowski

Sylvia Ciechanowski is working on her clinical doctorate (AuD), with an anticipated completion date of December 2024. Growing up around a family member with hearing loss, she knows firsthand the impact it can have on daily life and everyone around you. Sylvia holds a Master’s of Science in Audiology from Dalhousie University located in Halifax, Nova Scotia. Driven by her passion to help others, she takes pride in providing patient-centered care and tailoring treatment plans for each patient. Sylvia is passionate about accessibility and inclusion. She works part time as a live captioner, making live content instantly accessible in real time for live events and students. Her desire to help people hear led her to join the Hear the World Foundation and travel to Haiti to help fit hearing aids at the Haiti Deaf Academy and in the community.

 
Teresa Kwok
Teresa Kwok

Teresa Kwok is a Communicative Disorders Assistant (CDA) at Baycrest Hearing Services. She completed her Communicative Disorders Assistant Graduate Certificate at Durham College, and has experience working with adults with various communication needs. She works closely with the Audiologists to provide hearing aid and communication support for our patients. She collaborates with patients, caregivers and staff members to optimize patients’ hearing health and experience with using amplification devices. She strives to provide patient-centred care in a safe and welcoming space.