An audiologist diagnoses, manages and treats patients who have hearing, balance, or related problems — the Bureau of Labor Statistics' one-line definition of the job.
Behind that line sits a specific set of tasks: evaluating hearing and balance, fitting and dispensing hearing aids, programming cochlear implants, counseling patients and families, and delegating to and supervising support staff.
This page works through those duties task by task, the way an employer's job posting lays them out.
What does an audiologist do?
The Bureau of Labor Statistics defines audiologists as the professionals who diagnose, manage, and treat patients who have hearing, balance, or related problems.
Diagnosis is inside the definition: an audiologist is the clinician deciding what the test results mean, not only the one running the tests.
The profession's own scope documents agree, in more detail.
ASHA's Scope of Practice in Audiology, approved by ASHA's Board of Directors on August 20, 2018, says audiologists engage in hearing and balance assessment, nonmedical treatment and (re)habilitation, including diagnosis, for people of all ages.
The American Academy of Audiology's 2023 Scope of Practice describes audiologists as independent practitioners who serve as point-of-entry health-care providers for persons with auditory and vestibular disorders.
Point of entry is a working condition, not a slogan.
It means the audiologist can be the first clinician a patient sees for a hearing or balance concern, and the evaluation, the treatment plan and the next steps can follow from that first visit.
Licensing sits underneath the scope documents.
BLS notes that all states require audiologists to be licensed, with requirements that vary by state but typically include an AuD from an accredited program.
The scope documents describe what the profession does; the state license decides what it may do where you work.
The duty list itself breaks into a small number of task families.
The rest of this page works through them one family at a time.
- Diagnostic testing — examination, evaluation and diagnosis
- Hearing aids — selection, fitting, dispensing and repairs
- Tinnitus, balance and cochlear implant care
- Counseling, documentation and supervision of support staff
Those legal and training details belong to the audiologist career guide.
This page stays on the work itself — the tasks an employer expects when a posting goes up.
Diagnostic testing duties
Evaluation is where the diagnostic work starts.
O*NET's occupational profile for audiologists (SOC 29-1181) lists evaluating hearing and balance disorders to determine diagnoses and courses of treatment as a core task — the step that turns a patient's complaint into a diagnosis and a plan.
BLS's duty list describes the same sequence: examine patients who have conditions of the outer, middle or inner ear, diagnose the problem, and create a treatment plan.
The examination, the diagnosis and the treatment plan are three separate pieces of work.
Ear canal care is part of the examination.
O*NET lists examining and cleaning ear canals among audiologist tasks, and both scope documents name cerumen — earwax — management directly: ASHA's 2018 scope lists cerumen management among audiologic intervention services, and AAA's 2023 scope says audiologists may remove cerumen when necessary.
Testing is not the endpoint.
The findings feed the treatment plan from the federal duty list, and the fitting and counseling duties that follow carry that plan out.
Whether dispensing hearing aids needs anything beyond the audiology license is decided state by state.
The scope describes the profession — the state board controls the job
Hearing aid selection, fitting and verification
Then comes the hearing aid work.
BLS lists fitting and dispensing hearing aids — and other assistive listening devices — among typical audiologist duties, and O*NET's task list adds repairing them.
Selection, the fit and the repair bench are all the same job.
Selection is a judgment the scope documents assign explicitly.
AAA's 2023 scope says audiologists determine the appropriateness of both prescriptive and over-the-counter hearing aids for persons with hearing loss, so over-the-counter devices sit inside the audiologist's selection conversation rather than outside it.
Verification — checking that a fitted device is doing what the prescription called for — gets the thinnest description in the federal duty lists this page draws on.
Those lists cover the fitting and dispensing work, not the protocol a clinic follows to check a fit.
The duty lists don't say how that check happens, so the job posting is the honest source for what a specific employer expects.
The dispensing work does not end at the fitting appointment, either.
O*NET counts repairing hearing aids as its own task alongside the fitting and dispensing work.
Tinnitus, balance and implant work
Three clinical areas round out the caseload beyond the hearing aid chair.
The first is balance: BLS notes audiologists also help patients who have vertigo or other balance problems, for example by demonstrating head-movement or positioning exercises.
The second is tinnitus.
ASHA's 2018 scope document lists tinnitus, along with auditory processing, among the assessment areas audiologists cover across the lifespan — so tinnitus evaluation sits inside the core assessment scope rather than at its edge.
The third is implant work.
O*NET lists programming and monitoring cochlear implants among audiologist tasks — implant care is both an initial programming job and an ongoing monitoring job.
A formal tinnitus credential exists on top of the license.
The American Board of Audiology's Certificate Holder–Tinnitus Management credential, first offered in 2018, is an online self-study program of 7 modules (1.4 Tier 1 CEUs) for licensed audiologists, to be completed within 18 months.
Counseling, documentation and supervision
Counseling is not an add-on to the clinical work; BLS lists it as a duty in its own right — counseling patients and their families.
ASHA's scope frames the treatment side as nonmedical treatment and (re)habilitation, which is the bucket the counseling work falls into.
Documentation is the quieter half of clinical work.
The evaluations, diagnoses and treatment plans in the federal duty lists all generate records — test results, plan notes, fitting and repair records.
The duty lists describe the clinical work, not how the paperwork is split, so who charts what is a question to ask each employer.
The third family is directing other people's work.
AAA's 2023 scope says audiologists may delegate to and supervise non-audiologists such as technicians and clinical assistants, so directing support staff sits inside the profession's own scope statement.
Delegation only works when everyone knows the boundary, and what a support staffer may do depends on state rules.
The audiology assistant guide explains what assistants do, task by task, on its own page.
How duties vary by setting
One license, many different jobs.
O*NET's reported job titles for audiologists include clinical audiologist, dispensing audiologist, educational audiologist, forensic audiologist, industrial audiologist, pediatric audiologist and staff audiologist.
Each title points at a setting or a duty mix, which is why a single occupation covers such different working lives.
Read the titles as pointers, because the setting is written into the name for several of them: educational points at education work, pediatric at children, and dispensing at the fitting-and-dispensing end of the profession.
Clinical audiologist and staff audiologist are the generalist labels, carrying no setting in the name.
Schedule bends with the setting too.
BLS notes that most audiologists work full time, and that some work weekends and evenings to meet patients' needs.
The care model is not fixed to one room either.
AAA's 2023 scope says audiologists may provide services in person or remotely via telehealth — so check whether a posting describes in-person clinic work, telepractice, or both.
What about the caseload — how many patients a day?
The sources this page draws on do not publish typical daily patient counts or appointment lengths: BLS, O*NET and the two scope documents describe duties, not throughput.
Any article that quotes a standard patients-per-day figure for the profession as a whole is guessing, so treat caseload as a question to ask in the interview rather than a number to assume.
Two postings with the same title can still describe different weeks, because the setting, the specialty mix and the state's delegation rules all reshape the duty list.
Compare postings on their task lists, not their job titles.
Find audiologist jobs
The duty families above do not carry the same weight in every job.
The postings show which duties each employer actually weights.
Browse open audiologist jobs on HearingHires to see how employers phrase these duties in live postings — the duty list in a posting tells you more about the actual job than the title does.
Career information, not medical, legal or licensing advice. Scope, supervision and dispensing rules are set by the state board that issues the license; confirm them with your state board before you rely on any of them.