Tuning forks are an integral part of the equipment in acoustic and ENT medicine, whether it is used as a vibrating fork or a medical fork. In the world of music, the tuning fork is used to tune the chamber note of musical instruments to the same pitch, while in medicine it is used to check the patient's sensation of vibration. doi: 10.1055/s-2007-997398.Sound makes music – Medical tuning forks on the DocCheck store
Beth Hundt, the Smithsonian Museum, and “The History of the Tuning-Fork,” (1997). Today’s #FlashbackFriday brought to you by the Bjoring Center for Nursing Historical Inquiry, one of four nursing history archives in the world. “We sent them the stuff,” laughed Hundt, “but they bring their keen sense of observation and lots of knowledge.” Many also believe that tuning forks are useful in promoting concentration and relaxation through the use of sound therapy.įor nurse practitioner students learning at home this spring and summer, the forks and other nursing tools proved a fun way to practice and hone their assessment skills even under quarantine. Tuning forks even come in handy if a broken bone is suspected and an X-ray machine is not available. A loss of sensation, Hundt said, may be caused by a chronic illness, like diabetes, older age, or even a side-effect of medication, like chemotherapy. A vibrating tuning fork-touched to a patient’s extremities while her eyes are closed (usually a distal joint, said Hundt, like the fingers or toes)-can help a nurse determine whether a patient has neuropathy or a spinal injury. Tuning forks are also useful in assessing a patient’s loss of neurologic sensation, explained assistant professor Beth Hundt. The Rinne, therefore, helps nurses determine whether hearing loss is indicated, and refer the patient to an appropriate specialist if it is. In a healthy ear, conduction of sound through air should be greater than perception of sound through bone. In each position, the patient indicates whether they hear the sound, and signal when they perceive that the sound stops. For the Rinne Test, a nurse places the vibrating tuning fork against the mastoid bone behind the patient’s ear for a few seconds, then moves it in front of the ear canal. The Weber test-in which a nurse strikes a tuning fork and places its stem on the crown of a patient’s head or forehead, equidistant from each ear-assesses whether hearing is better on one side or the other. Brown, superintendent of nurses at the training school of the Manhattan Eye, Ear, and Throat Hospital), “in testing in the hearing to find tone limits that is, the lowest and the highest tone a patient can ear, and at the same time note whether he can hear the intermediate tones.”Īt the turn of the nineteenth century and today, advanced practice nursing students do the Weber and Rinne Tests to assess whether and what kind of hearing loss is present. “It is necessary,” assert the authors of the 1937 nursing textbook NURSING IN DISEASES OF THE EYE, EAR, NOSE, AND THROAT (by, among others, registered nurse Mary P. In nursing, tuning forks were used then and now to assess patients’ hearing and, if loss is indicated, to help determine whether the reason for the loss was due to problems with “sound-conducting” or “sound-perceiving.”
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