An audiology assistant performs the delegated work of a hearing clinic: patient flow, hearing aid care, testing support, equipment upkeep and office tasks — each one prescribed, directed and supervised by a certified and/or licensed audiologist.
ASHA's 2022 Scope of Practice for Audiology Assistants sorts the delegable work into four duty areas and 32 tasks.
This page walks the duties the way a workday splits them: patients, devices, tests, equipment and admin.
Patient-facing tasks: greeting, rooming and case histories
ASHA's scope puts assistants at the front of the visit: helping patients complete case history forms and preparing the room and equipment for the appointment, alongside the clerical work that keeps a clinic moving.
Patient-facing does not mean patient-advising.
The assistant moves people through the schedule and gathers history.
The conversation about what results mean belongs to the audiologist — a line this page returns to at the end.
One public posting shows the same shape.
A USAJOBS posting for a VA Health Technician (Audiology) role lists greeting and triaging patients among the duties — the federal system's version of first contact.
Titles vary more than the work does.
ASHA and the Academy of Doctors of Audiology use audiology assistant.
AAA began using audiology technician for an assistant membership category in 2016, and its position statement applies audiology assistant generically to titles such as audiology aide and audiologic technician.
In ASHA's 2025 survey of assistants, reported titles included Audiology Assistant (42%), Audiology Technician (23%) and others such as Patient Care Coordinator, Hearing Screening Technician and Office Manager.
So in the sources above, audiology technician and audiology assistant describe the same family of delegated work — a good reason to read the duty list in a posting, not just the title.
If you are mapping the whole role rather than the tasks — entry routes, certification, pay — the audiology assistant career guide covers it end to end.
Hearing aid tasks: clean-and-checks, minor repairs, troubleshooting
Device work runs through ASHA's task list.
The scope lets assistants perform listening checks and visual inspection of hearing devices, troubleshoot and make minor repairs, and make minor modifications to earmolds and custom products.
Cleaning tops the survey's daily-task list.
In ASHA's 2025 survey, cleaning hearing aids was the most frequent daily task — 82% of the 17 respondents who answered reported doing it daily.
The survey had only 28 audiology assistant respondents, so treat its percentages as a snapshot of who answered, not a market measure.
The device list runs deeper where training supports it.
ASHA's scope lets assistants preset hearing aids using the manufacturer's initial-fit software before a fitting appointment, and restore or verify previous device settings.
ASHA's Practice Portal adds electroacoustic analysis of hearing aids where state law permits and competence is shown.
The VA posting runs longer still: hearing aid troubleshooting and repair, listening checks, electroacoustic analysis and Bluetooth pairing are all on its federal duty list, alongside taking earmold impressions.
What does not move across is the fitting decision.
Under ASHA's scope an assistant should not write or modify the plan of care.
AAA likewise limits assistant duties to tasks that do not require professional judgment.
The assistant's checks, presets and repairs therefore feed the audiologist's fitting and verification work rather than replace it.
Testing support: screening, pediatric test assist, prep for VNG/ABR
Within ASHA's scope, assistants run tests without interpreting them.
The scope allows audiologic testing without clinical interpretation, and names the examples: hearing screening, pure-tone air-conduction thresholds, newborn hearing screening, immittance screening and otoacoustic emission (OAE) screening.
ASHA's Practice Portal adds two more under conditions — pure-tone reassessment of established patients and assisting with pediatric testing are tasks an assistant may take on where state law permits and competence is shown.
AAA's position statement lists the same family by example: neonatal hearing screening, air-conduction testing, and preparing patients for electrophysiologic and balance testing — the VNG and ABR family of studies, where the assistant's listed role is preparation.
The VA posting mirrors it: setting up vestibular/neurodiagnostic tests and conducting pass/fail hearing screenings without interpretation.
Task mix can differ sharply from the national list.
Newborn hearing screening is on ASHA's delegable list, yet 81% of surveyed assistants said they never conducted newborn screenings (16 answered that question).
Equipment and infection control
The quieter half of the duty list is what keeps testing trustworthy.
ASHA's scope assigns assistants infection control using standard precautions and room and equipment preparation; AAA's position statement lists equipment maintenance among its example duties.
On a working day, that can look like cleaning test equipment between patients, resetting rooms before the next appointment and stocking materials — ASHA's clerical stocking duty overlaps with this section in practice.
The equipment tasks involve no clinical decisions on their own — the reason both bodies treat them as delegable under an audiologist's supervision.
Administrative tasks: records, stocking and scheduling
ASHA's scope lists clerical work among assistant duties: stocking of materials, recordkeeping and scheduling activities.
In ASHA's 2025 survey, 48% of assistant respondents reported performing managerial duties such as scheduling.
The title overlap cuts both ways.
Assistants in the survey also reported titles such as Patient Care Coordinator and Office Manager.
Where the front-desk work becomes the whole job, that is the patient care coordinator role.
What assistants never do: interpretation, diagnosis and counseling
The duty list has a hard edge, and both professional bodies draw the same line.
AAA limits assistant duties to tasks that do not require professional judgment.
ASHA's scope document turns that into four specific prohibitions: an assistant should not give interpretive information about a patient's status, write or modify the plan of care, sign formal documents without the audiologist's co-signature, or attend case conferences without the audiologist present.
ASHA's Practice Portal extends the list: no counseling patients or families about their status, no making referrals, no selecting or discharging patients, and no using a title other than the one the supervising audiologist sets.
Read against the duty list, the pattern is consistent.
The assistant produces data — a screening result, a working device, a prepped room — and every decision about what the data means stays with the audiologist.
The full rundown of what assistants can and cannot do walks both sides of that line task by task, including how supervision is defined and where state law changes the answer.
Career information, not medical, legal or licensing advice. Duties and delegation come from state law and from ASHA's and AAA's national statements; confirm current requirements with your state licensing board and your supervising audiologist.
State law and the delegating audiologist set the final task list