The Louisiana Hearing Aid Dealer license, issued by the Louisiana Board for Hearing Aid Dealers under Revised Statutes 37:2441–2465, authorizes the holder to test hearing while engaged in the selling and fitting of hearing aids in Louisiana. Its examination has three parts on three different clocks: a written ILE taken online after Board approval, an IHS practical examination proctored and graded by the Board each January and on designated dates, and an Open Book Examination on the Louisiana Licensing Act and Bylaws. The PassProfessor Louisiana Hearing Aid Dealer program, described on the companion program page at /louisiana-hearing-instrument-specialist-exam-prep/, prepares candidates for that examination set.
This program is part of the expanding PassProfessor catalog — join the notify list and we’ll email you when enrollment opens.
The credential at a glance
| Item | Verified position |
|---|---|
| Program | Louisiana Hearing Aid Dealer, the license to fit and dispense hearing instruments in Louisiana |
| Licensing authority | Louisiana Board for Hearing Aid Dealers; R.S. 37:2441–2465 and the Board’s Licensing Act Bylaws (Rev. 7/22) |
| Examination | Written and practical examinations are both the International Licensing Examination for Hearing Healthcare Professionals (ILE) provided by IHS (Bylaws Article VI, Section 4); plus an Open Book Examination on the Louisiana Licensing Act and Bylaws, completed and submitted online to the Board. The practical is given in January and on Board-designated dates, proctored by the Board, at $200 per occurrence |
| Passing standard | No numeric pass mark is published in the Louisiana statute or bylaws verified for this package, and no Louisiana pass figure is printed here |
| Qualifications | Good moral character; twenty-one years of age or older; education equivalent to a four-year accredited high school course and two years of college or accredited higher education; freedom from contagious or infectious disease (R.S. 37:2445); new applicant fee $200 |
| Route | Application received complete at least ninety days before the next scheduled examination → written ILE, Board-proctored practical, Open Book Examination → license on the $75 registration fee; Temporary Training Permit is the supervised trainee tier |
| Credential term | License expires December 31 each year; renewal requires twelve hours of Board-approved continuing education per year, maximum four hours online or by correspondence |
| Administrator note | PassProfessor is independent and is not affiliated with the Louisiana Board for Hearing Aid Dealers or the International Hearing Society |
Louisiana rewards candidates who read the credential as the Board built it: a national examination adopted wholesale for the written and practical parts, a state law examination that even experienced out-of-state dealers must take, a trainee permit written to expire against the examination calendar, and an annual license that returns its holder to the Act every year. The guide below takes each verified element in turn.
Reading the verified facts
Every fact in the table above was pinned to Louisiana primary material — R.S. 37:2441–2465 and the Board’s Licensing Act Bylaws (Rev. 7/22) — during this program’s research pass. Three reading rules apply throughout the guide. First, the examination’s architecture is stated in the bylaws’ own sentence: the examinations are written, practical, and open book, and the written and practical are the ILE. No part is renamed, and the practical is never described as a separate state-devised test. Second, no passing figure is invented: neither the statute nor the bylaws publish a numeric pass mark for any part in the sources verified, and any percentage quoted by third-party material for Louisiana should be treated as unverified. Third, the Temporary Training Permit is never described as a license: it is a supervised, examination-bound training document with a statutory end date, and the Certificate of Endorsement is an entry route for out-of-state dealers, not a Louisiana license by another name until the Board issues it.
The route, step by step
Step one — confirm the R.S. 37:2445 qualifications — good moral character, age twenty-one or older, the high-school-plus-two-years higher education standard (or the statute’s preserved pre-chapter practice position), and freedom from contagious or infectious disease — and pay the $200 new applicant fee. Step two — file a complete, notarized application in time: complete applications for examination must be received at least ninety days before the next scheduled examination, and Temporary Training Permit applications carry notarized sponsor and co-sponsor signatures. Step three — train, where the permit is the route, under direct supervision from the sponsor’s or co-sponsor’s own office, on a permit that ends thirty days after the next required examination concludes — remembering that a permit issued four months before that examination obliges its holder to sit it. Step four — take the written ILE with IHS, online as IHS designates, once the Board has approved the application. Step five — take the practical in January or on a Board-designated date, proctored by the Board or its designees, at $200 per occurrence. Step six — complete the Open Book Examination on the Act and Bylaws and submit it online to the Board. Step seven — register the license on the $75 fee under R.S. 37:2448, display it as the Act requires, and hold the December 31 renewal and twelve-hour continuing education cycle from that year forward.
The outline in full
The outline has three parts, fixed by Bylaws Article VI, Section 4. Each is stated here in full, because in Louisiana the parts interlock on different clocks: the written part waits on the Board, the practical part waits on the calendar, and the open book part tests the law the other two parts operate inside.
The written examination: the ILE, online after Board approval
The written examination is the International Licensing Examination for Hearing Healthcare Professionals, provided by IHS. Its scope, as R.S. 37:2447 states the Louisiana examination’s scope, is tests of knowledge in the areas of hearing testing and the other areas that determine the capability of fitting and selling hearing aids — the general professional knowledge of the occupation: sound and hearing, audiometric testing, hearing aid function and selection, fitting, and the conduct of the sale and follow-up. The same statute bounds the paper honestly: it does not include questions requiring a formal college, medical, surgical, or audiological education. The sitting mechanics are Louisiana’s distinctive contribution to this part: the candidate does not book first and seek approval later. Only once the Board has approved the license application may the applicant schedule the written portion with IHS, and the written examination is then completed online as IHS designates. Approval discipline — the ninety-day complete-application rule upstream of it — is therefore part of written-examination preparation in Louisiana in a way it is not in walk-in testing states.
The practical examination: the IHS practical, under the Board’s proctoring
The practical examination is likewise the ILE practical — and likewise Louisiana-shaped in its administration. Article VI, Section 1 fixes its calendar: IHS Practical Examinations for license applicants are given during the month of January of each year and on any other dates the Board designates. Section 2 fixes its supervision and price: the practical is proctored by the Board or by persons the Board designates, and the fee is $200 per occurrence, nonrefundable, payable to the Board. What is examined is the performed craft the written paper can only describe — audiometric testing performed accurately, impressions taken safely and completely, fitting procedures executed in the Board’s presence. The candidate prepares for this part as for a demonstration, not a description: procedures rehearsed to fluency, in sequence, under observation.
The Open Book Examination: the Louisiana Licensing Act and Bylaws
The third part examines the Louisiana Licensing Act and the Board’s Bylaws — the complete operating law of the credential. Its content is the Act’s own structure: who must be licensed and who is exempt; the qualifications and application rules, including the Temporary Training Permit, its sponsors, and its renewal limits; the examination rules themselves; audiometric calibration (Bylaws Article VII); unethical conduct (Bylaws Article VIII); and the consumer provisions of the Act, including the testing period for hearing aids and the three-day cooling-off period. It is completed and submitted online to the Board, and it is open book by design: the examined skill is finding, reading, and applying the provision that governs the situation in front of you — the same skill the dealer uses across the counter. That is why Louisiana requires it without exception: first-time applicants take it, and Certificate of Endorsement applicants licensed in other states take it too. Experience elsewhere earns no exemption from Louisiana law in Louisiana.
What is not published: the passing standard
Louisiana publishes its examination architecture in unusual detail — the instruments, the proctoring, the calendar, the fees — and publishes no numeric pass mark for any part in the statute or bylaws verified for this package. This guide follows the state in that: no percentage, scaled score, or raw figure is stated for the written ILE, the practical, or the Open Book Examination, because stating one would mean inventing a Louisiana standard Louisiana has not published. The examining body’s own standard governs the ILE parts as IHS administers them; the Board’s judgment governs its open book paper. Two consequences follow for preparation. First, the honest target is coverage and fluency rather than a margin: the full hearing-testing and fitting field for the ILE parts, and genuine working command of the Act and Bylaws for the open book part. Second, any percentage for Louisiana quoted by third-party material should be treated as unverified — it does not come from R.S. 37:2441–2465 or from the Board’s bylaws.
The sittings themselves
The three sittings could hardly differ more. The written ILE is the flexible one — online, as IHS designates, once Board approval has unlocked scheduling — and its trap is upstream: the candidate whose complete application missed the ninety-day line is not in the cycle at all. The practical is the fixed one: a January sitting, or a Board-designated date, in the Board’s presence, at $200 per occurrence, and its trap is the calendar — a candidate who becomes ready in February plans around a year-shaped interval unless the Board designates another date. The Open Book Examination is the portable one — completed and submitted online to the Board — and its trap is complacency: open book rewards the candidate who has already worked in the Act and merely verifies, and punishes the candidate who meets its provisions for the first time with the clock running. A sound Louisiana plan sequences all three deliberately: application filed against the ninety-day rule, written preparation and practical rehearsal run in parallel toward January, and the Act read as a working text from the first week, not the last.
A study plan built on how this examination is actually put together
Build the plan backwards from the practical’s calendar, because January governs everything. First, the application audit — qualifications checked against R.S. 37:2445, the complete notarized application filed against the ninety-day rule, and the Temporary Training Permit, where used, timed so its thirty-days-after-the-examination life covers the sittings it exists for. Second, the Act as a working text — the Licensing Act and Bylaws read from the first month, provision by provision, with the open book paper in mind: the goal is an indexed familiarity that lets the candidate verify an answer in moments, not locate a chapter in minutes. Third, the written ILE field — hearing testing and the capability of fitting and selling, worked at full breadth: sound and hearing, audiometric method, instrument function and selection, fitting and follow-up. Fourth, the practical as rehearsal — audiometric testing and impression work performed in sequence, under observation, to the fluency a Board-proctored sitting assumes, intensifying as January approaches. Finally, the endorsement check — applicants arriving from another state confirm early that the Open Book Examination is theirs to take as well, and plan it into the same season rather than discovering it at the end.
The working method: turning the outline into a performance
Louisiana preparation fails most often as a calendar problem disguised as a knowledge problem: three examinations, three clocks, and a permit written to expire against one of them. The working method that answers it has four parts. One timeline, three deadlines. The application date, the written sitting, the January practical, the open book submission, and the permit’s end date are placed on a single calendar at the start, and study blocks are assigned backward from the practical. The Act read in working order. The bylaws’ articles studied in the order the dealer lives them — application, examinations, calibration, unethical conduct — each provision restated as the counter situation it governs. Performed practice under eyes. The practical skills rehearsed in front of the sponsor or a licensed colleague, because the Board’s proctoring makes observation itself part of the examination condition, and fluency that only exists unobserved is not yet fluency. An error log split by part. Written misses, practical faults, and Act-and-Bylaws gaps logged separately; the three parts fail independently, and the log that merges them hides which clock is actually at risk.
The errors this examination is built to catch
Louisiana’s examination set catches a recognizable set. Booking before approval — attempting to schedule the written ILE before the Board has approved the application — reverses the bylaws’ sequence and goes nowhere. Filing inside the ninety-day line removes the candidate from the examination cycle the application was aimed at, whatever the candidate’s readiness. Treating the practical as a vendor appointment misses that it runs in January and on Board-designated dates, proctored by the Board — and that a missed January is a year-shaped problem. Under-preparing the Open Book Examination because it is open book confuses access with fluency; the paper rewards the candidate who already works in the Act. Letting the training permit lapse against the calendar — a permit that ends thirty days after the next required examination, issued to a holder who then does not sit it — closes the supervised route except for good cause shown. And endorsement complacency — the experienced out-of-state dealer who assumes the Open Book Examination is a first-timer’s hurdle — meets the one Louisiana requirement that admits no experience exemption.
The credential in one view
The Louisiana Hearing Aid Dealer license in one view is a national examination held inside a state frame. The knowledge and the craft are tested by the ILE, written and practical, exactly as IHS provides them; everything that makes the credential Louisiana — who may apply and on what qualifications, the notarized and ninety-day application discipline, the training permit that expires against the examination calendar, the Board standing in the practical room, the open book test of the Act itself, the annual December license and its twelve hours of continuing education — is the frame the Board built around the national core. The candidate who studies the credential as that single shape finds the parts explaining each other: the Act the open book paper examines is the same Act that sets the permit’s end date, the practical’s fee, and the renewal’s education hours.
After the sittings: registration, renewal, and the annual cycle
On passing, the applicant registers the license on payment of the $75 fee under R.S. 37:2448, and the license is displayed as the Act requires. Its term is the calendar year: every Louisiana license expires on December 31, and renewal requires the twelve hours of Board-approved continuing education for the year — no more than four of them by internet or correspondence — documented to the Board as proof of exposure to new developments in the practice, with the approved categories tracking the working craft, including procedures in the selection and fitting of hearing aids. The single timing relief is the July 1 rule: a license received by endorsement or examination on July 1 or later in a year carries no continuing education obligation until December 31 of the following year. The dealer who treats the Act as a living text — calibration kept current, testing and cooling-off provisions honored in every sale, unethical conduct provisions known before they are needed — meets each annual renewal as the formality Louisiana designed it to be.
The Temporary Training Permit, in full
The permit repays a slow reading because its clock drives the whole first-time route. R.S. 37:2449(A) opens it to an applicant who fulfills the R.S. 37:2445 requirements and has not previously applied to take the R.S. 37:2446 examination. On the application and the $100 fee, the Board issues a permit entitling the holder to participate in the fitting and selling of hearing aids under direct supervision, for a period ending thirty days after the conclusion of the next examination the holder is required to take. Section C conditions issuance on supervision: no permit issues unless the applicant shows the Board that they are or will be supervised and trained by a sponsor meeting the statute’s requirements, and the bylaws add that the holder works out of the office where the fully licensed sponsor or co-sponsor is permanently and regularly located. The two failure branches are asymmetric, and candidates should know both cold. Not sitting is the fatal branch: a holder who does not take the next required examination after issuance cannot renew except for good cause shown to the Board’s satisfaction. Sitting and not passing is the recoverable branch: the Board may renew the permit, once only, on the $75 renewal fee, for a period ending thirty days after the conclusion of the next examination given. One renewal is the statutory maximum. Behind the permit stand R.S. 37:2449.1’s guidelines for the training of permit holders and §2449.2’s sponsor and co-sponsor requirements, with §2449.3 fixing the permit holder’s authority — the supervised, provisional character of the tier is statutory, not customary, and the Open Book Examination can reach every one of these provisions.
The Act around the examinations: what the open book paper can reach
The open book paper’s territory is the whole Act, and its less obvious articles are where preparation separates. Audiometric calibration (Bylaws Article VII) governs the trustworthiness of the instrument every measurement depends on — the dealer’s audiometers are regulated equipment, and calibration discipline is a licensing obligation, not a housekeeping preference. Unethical conduct (Bylaws Article VIII) states the conduct provisions the license is held under, companion to the Act’s own prohibited-practice rules. The consumer provisions of the Act — the testing period for hearing aids (R.S. 37:2444.1) and the three-day cooling-off period (R.S. 37:2444.2) — shape every sale’s paperwork and timing. The display and registration provisions — the license displayed as R.S. 37:2443 requires, the $75 registration on passing under §2448 — complete the frame. A candidate preparing the open book paper should work the Act in its own order, building a personal map from situation to provision: a returned aid inside the cooling-off period, a calibration question at inspection, a permit question from a trainee in the office. The paper is open book because the license is open book — the dealer who can find the governing provision under examination conditions is demonstrating the same competence the counter will demand without notice.
The Board behind the examinations
Louisiana’s examination set makes more sense read alongside the Board that administers it. The Louisiana Board for Hearing Aid Dealers exists under R.S. 37:2441–2465 — an Act originating in Acts 1968, No. 302, to provide for the examination and licensing of persons who test hearing while engaged in the selling and fitting of hearing aids, and for the regulation of that selling and fitting to the public. Its bylaws are the Board’s own working constitution, revised most recently in July 2022, and they are an examined text: the Open Book Examination covers the Licensing Act and Bylaws together, so the Board’s internal articles on applications, examinations, calibration, and unethical conduct are licensing content, not administrative trivia. The Board’s posture across the route is consistent and worth naming: it approves before IHS schedules; it proctors the practical its adopted examination provides; it receives the open book paper online; it sets the practical’s fee and keeps it per occurrence; it issues and bounds the training permit; and it receives the continuing education documentation that renews the license each December. A Louisiana candidate is therefore never dealing with a distant national vendor alone — every stage of the route touches the Board directly, and preparation that treats the Board as a mailbox rather than the examining authority misjudges the state’s structure from the first step.
Frequently asked questions
Which Louisiana text fixes the three-part examination?
Article VI of the Board’s Licensing Act Bylaws. Section 4 provides that the examinations shall be written, practical, and an Open Book Examination on the Louisiana Licensing Act and Bylaws, and that the written and practical examinations shall be the International Licensing Examination for Hearing Healthcare Professionals (ILE) provided by the International Hearing Society.
When is the Louisiana practical examination given?
During the month of January of each year, and on any other dates the Board designates (Bylaws Article VI, Section 1). The Board gives at least one examination of the statutory type each year under R.S. 37:2446.
Who proctors the Louisiana practical?
The Board, or the persons it designates (Bylaws Article VI, Section 2) — the same provision sets the $200 per-occurrence, nonrefundable practical fee payable to the Board.
What does R.S. 37:2447 say about the examination’s scope?
The examination consists of tests of knowledge in the areas of hearing testing and the other areas that determine the capability of fitting and selling hearing aids; it does not include questions requiring a formal college, medical, surgical, or audiological education; and the examination is determined and proctored by the Board.
Must applications really be notarized?
Yes. Bylaws Article V, Section 4 requires all applications to be subscribed by the applicant and sworn to before a notary public — and, for the Temporary Training Permit, the sponsor’s and co-sponsor’s signatures notarized as well.
Where must a Temporary Training Permit holder work?
Out of the office of the sponsor or co-sponsor, where that sponsor or co-sponsor is permanently and regularly located, under the direct supervision of the fully licensed sponsor or co-sponsor (Bylaws Article VI, Section 5; R.S. 37:2449).
What continuing education categories does the statute name?
R.S. 37:2446.1 requires twelve hours per year in Board-approved courses and names the categories of study the Board shall approve toward it, beginning with procedures in the selection and fitting of hearing aids — the renewal obligation that keeps the annual license current.
Does Louisiana test its law on experienced dealers moving into the state?
Yes. The Open Book Examination on the Louisiana Licensing Act and Bylaws is required of Certificate of Endorsement applicants as well as first-time applicants; there is no experience exemption from it.
How often must the Louisiana license be renewed, and on what terms?
Annually — the license expires December 31 each year — with twelve hours of Board-approved continuing education per year, at most four hours by internet or correspondence, documented to the Board (R.S. 37:2446.1). Licenses received by endorsement or examination on July 1 or later are excused the twelve hours until December 31 of the following year.
Is PassProfessor affiliated with the Louisiana Board or IHS?
No. PassProfessor is an independent preparation provider. The Louisiana Board for Hearing Aid Dealers alone licenses; IHS provides the written and practical examinations the Board has adopted.
When does enrollment open for the PassProfessor program?
The program is in the works and enrollment is not yet open. Leave an email address on this page and PassProfessor will write to you when the program is ready — and only about this program.