APSO is a community of audiologists who believe that developing and adopting practice standards is key to the future growth of our profession. As a 501(c)(6) non-profit APSO must have membership. Members are active in the organization and want to support the activities of APSO, both financially and through donation of their time and expertise. Members are eligible to run for a position on the APSO Board of Directors. If you are not currently a member, we would appreciate your support. You may join APSO by visiting our Membership page.
In April, 2017, a small group of audiologists appeared on an audiology podcast to discuss different types of standards in the profession of audiology and how they apply to our everyday practice. This discussion lead to an agreement that we do not have standards of practice in the profession and that we need to adopt and follow universal standards in order to grow and thrive and meet future threats to the profession.
These discussions continued offline after the podcast was published and these four audiologists continued talking about how we might achieve this goal of developing, implementing, and gaining widespread adoption of practice standards. These continued informal discussions lead to formal meetings and ultimately to inviting other colleagues to join the meetings and lend their expertise to the dialog.
As discussions continued, the decision was made to create a new organization to develop standards for audiology. This organization was not to compete with any others in the profession, but to collaborate with all organizations in the profession, large and small, in order to achieve this important goal of developing and educating colleagues about practice standards.
By the Fall of 2017, a full board of 9 audiologists had been identified and invited to join the others and form the first Board of Directors of the newly named Audiology Practice Standards Organization. The organization was incorporated in the State of Minnesota on December 4th, 2017, and the first formal meeting of the Board of Directors was held December 20th, 2017.
The board immediately got to work writing a mission and goals, surveying practice standards in healthcare, creating sound processes for practice standards development for APSO, and the many other tasks necessary to launch a new organization. The first practice standard was published in December, 2019, with additional standards created since then.
It is exciting to begin work in such an important area for our profession. We hope you will join our community of dedicated audiologists and lend your support and energy. Please consider becoming a APSO Member today and even to making an additional donation to further support our work.
