The Maryland Hearing Aid Dispenser license, issued by the Board of Examiners for Audiologists, Hearing Aid Dispensers, Speech-Language Pathologists, and Music Therapists, authorizes the holder to fit and dispense hearing aids in Maryland. Its examination, set by COMAR 10.41.08.05, consists of a written part and a practical part. The PassProfessor Maryland Hearing Aid Dispenser program, described on the companion program page at /maryland-hearing-instrument-specialist-exam-prep/, prepares candidates for that examination.
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The credential at a glance
| Item | Verified position |
|---|---|
| Program | Maryland Hearing Aid Dispenser, the license issued by the Board of Examiners for Audiologists, Hearing Aid Dispensers, Speech-Language Pathologists, and Music Therapists for fitting and dispensing hearing aids in Maryland |
| Licensing authority | Board of Examiners for Audiologists, Hearing Aid Dispensers, Speech-Language Pathologists, and Music Therapists (Maryland Department of Health); Health Occupations Article, Title 2, and COMAR 10.41.08 |
| Examination | Two parts under COMAR 10.41.08.05: a written part and a practical part. The written part uses the most recent competency model licensing examination from the Education Division of the International Hearing Society, in COMAR’s own words. The practical part tests pure tone audiometry (air and bone conduction), speech audiometry (speech reception and speech discrimination), masking methodology, choice and adaptation of hearing aids, testing of hearing aids, maintenance and basic repair of hearing aids, and taking of ear mold impressions |
| Passing standard | Practical part: an applicant shall obtain a score of at least 80 percent on the practical examination (COMAR 10.41.08.05E(2)) — printed here exactly as COMAR publishes it. Written part: the Board determines the passing score (COMAR 10.41.08.05E(1)); COMAR publishes no numerical written pass mark, and none is stated in this guide |
| Examination fees | Hearing aid dispenser examination fee $150; application fee for hearing aid dispenser limited license and examination $150; repeat written examination $100 (COMAR 10.41.01.02) |
| Eligibility to test | Six months of training under the supervision of a licensed hearing aid dispenser before taking the examination (COMAR 10.41.08.03B), and a certificate of completion of the International Hearing Society course “Distance Learning for the Professional in Hearing Health Sciences” provided to the Board before taking the examination (COMAR 10.41.08.03E); examination application filed at least 30 days before the examination date |
| Credential term | Licenses renew on a two-year cycle; renewal requires 30 hours of Board-approved continuing education in the 2-year licensing period (COMAR 10.41.08.11) |
| Administrator note | PassProfessor is independent and is not affiliated with the Board, the Maryland Department of Health, or the International Hearing Society |
Maryland rewards candidates who read the credential as COMAR built it: a training license first, a course certificate second, and only then an examination — half of it knowledge on paper, half of it craft performed in front of examiners, with the performed half carrying a published standard of 80 percent. One board governs every stage; one chapter, COMAR 10.41.08, states the route, the examination’s scope, its conduct, and its renewal terms; and one clock, the limited license’s two-year outer limit, governs how long the candidate has to get through it. The guide below takes each verified element in turn.
Reading the verified facts
Every fact in the table above was pinned to Maryland primary material — the text of COMAR 10.41.08 and the Board’s fee schedule at COMAR 10.41.01.02, both published by the Maryland Department of Health, and Health Occupations §2-304 — during this program’s research pass. Three reading rules apply throughout the guide. First, the written part is described in COMAR’s own words: the regulation does not name the written examination by a short acronym; it provides that the written examination “shall utilize the most recent competency model licensing examination from the Education Division of the International Hearing Society,” and this guide quotes that description rather than substituting a bare label for it. Second, the passing standards are printed only in the form COMAR publishes them: the practical standard is a number — at least 80 percent — and it is printed as a number; the written standard is a Board determination with no published number, and no number is invented for it here or anywhere else in this package. Third, the law examination that appears at COMAR 10.41.08.03C is confined to its actual scope: it is a requirement the Board imposes on an applicant who holds a license to practice medicine and intends to sell hearing aids at retail. It is not a third part of the standard dispenser’s examination, and this guide never presents it as one.
The route, step by step
Step one — obtain the Limited License and begin supervised training. The limited license is the entry document: it authorises supervised practice, not independent practice, and it names the supervising licensee who affirms responsibility for the trainee’s technical training and ethical conduct. The supervisor must be a Maryland licensee actively dispensing hearing aids, in practice at least two years after passing the Board examination, supervising no more than three limited licensees at once, and free of formal discipline in the previous five years. Step two — complete the training pattern COMAR prescribes. Twenty consecutive days under the supervisor’s direct and continuous supervision at the start, then direct supervision for a minimum of 20 hours per month, with the supervision covering the examination’s subject areas and the limited licensee keeping the documentation the Board may request. Six months of training under a licensed dispenser must be complete before the examination may be taken. Step three — finish the Distance Learning course. The certificate of completion for the International Hearing Society course “Distance Learning for the Professional in Hearing Health Sciences” goes to the Board before the Hearing Aid Dispensing Examination; a candidate without it on file is not yet an examination candidate, however complete the training. Step four — file and sit. The examination application is filed at least 30 days before the examination date, with the $150 examination fee, and the candidate sits the written and practical parts. Step five — convert to the full license. With both parts passed, the candidate applies for the full Hearing Aid Dispenser license, including evidence of graduation from an accredited 2-year post-secondary program. Work the limited license’s calendar backwards from step five: it expires at one year, renews once for one further year on the conditions COMAR states, and a candidate who reaches two years without the full license waits at least a year before a new limited license can be sought — so the route is planned as one timeline, not as five separate errands.
The outline in full
COMAR 10.41.08.05 gives the examination two parts and states the practical part’s content area by area. Each part is taken here in full, because the two parts examine the same occupation from opposite directions: the written part asks whether the candidate knows what a competent dispenser knows, and the practical part asks whether the candidate can do what a competent dispenser does, at the standard a member of the public is entitled to expect.
The written part: the competency model examination
The written part is defined by a single sentence of regulation: it utilizes the most recent competency model licensing examination from the Education Division of the International Hearing Society. Three consequences follow for preparation. First, the paper is current by construction — “most recent” means the candidate prepares against the IHS competency model as it stands at the sitting, not against a superseded edition circulating in older study material. Second, the paper is a competency paper: its organising question is what a dispenser must know to practise competently — the science of hearing and hearing disorders, the physics of sound as it bears on testing and fitting, audiometric principles, the structure and function of hearing aids, selection and adaptation, and the psychology of the hearing impaired person the dispenser serves. Those subject families are not guesses: they are the same families COMAR itself names when it defines continuing education “directly relating to the practice of fitting hearing aids” at 10.41.08.11 — the science of hearing and hearing disorders, the structure and function of hearing aids, and the psychology of the hearing impaired. Third, the written part is indivisible on retake: a candidate who does not earn a passing score retakes the entire written examination. Preparation that banks on partial credit from a first attempt misreads the rule; the paper is passed whole or sat again whole, at the $100 repeat fee.
The practical part: eight proficiency areas, one standard
COMAR requires the Board to ensure the practical part tests proficiency in eight areas, and each deserves a slower reading than a list gives it.
Pure tone audiometry, including testing and recording of air and bone conduction. The foundation skill: thresholds established correctly for each ear by each route, and recorded so that another practitioner could rely on the record. The working standard COMAR later imposes on licensees — air and bone conduction testing at 500, 1,000, 2,000, and 4,000 hertz — is the standard the examination’s performance is judged against in spirit: complete frequencies, correct procedure, honest recording.
Speech audiometry, including speech reception and speech discrimination testing. Two distinct measurements that candidates habitually merge: the level at which speech is received, and the accuracy with which it is discriminated once audible. The examination tests them as the separate proficiencies COMAR lists.
Masking methodology. The judgement skill of the practical part. Masking decides whether the threshold recorded belongs to the ear under test at all, and COMAR’s practice rules show how seriously Maryland takes it: masking is required in the licensee’s minimum testing procedures where the second ear’s threshold appears to differ by 30 decibels at any one frequency on air conduction, and where bone readings differ by more than 10 decibels between ears. The candidate who masks by habit rather than by indication, or who cannot say why masking was applied, is exposed here.
Choice and adaptation of hearing aids. Selection as a clinical act: matching the instrument to the measured loss, the ear, and the wearer, then adapting it — the fitting decisions that turn a device into a prescription. Testing of hearing aids follows: verifying that the instrument does what its specification claims, by measurement rather than by listening and hoping. Maintenance and basic repair of hearing aids completes the instrument strand: the faults a dispenser is expected to find and fix at the counter, distinguished from the faults that go back to the manufacturer.
Taking of ear mold impressions. The craft skill with a safety dimension: otoscopic awareness before material goes into the ear, correct placement and removal, and a finished impression that reproduces the ear faithfully enough to build on. Other techniques and procedures that may be required to fit hearing aids closes the list deliberately open-ended — COMAR reserves the Board’s ability to test the fitting process whole, and the candidate who has only rehearsed the seven named items as isolated tricks is unprepared for the eighth.
Across all eight, the standard is the one COMAR publishes: at least 80 percent on the practical examination. There is no published provision for compensating a failed area with a strong one, and preparation should assume the standard applies to the performance as a whole, at a level that leaves no area weak.
How the passing standards are set — and what is, and is not, published
Maryland publishes its two standards in two different forms, and the difference is itself a fact the candidate should understand. For the practical examination, COMAR 10.41.08.05E(2) states the standard outright: “An applicant shall obtain a score of at least 80 percent on the practical examination.” A candidate can plan against that number — it is high for a performed examination, and it means the practical part is not passed by adequacy in most areas and failure in one. For the written examination, COMAR 10.41.08.05E(1) states a mechanism instead of a number: “The Board shall determine the passing score for the written examination.” No percentage, raw score, or scaled score for the written part appears in the regulation, and none is stated in this guide. Third-party material that quotes a precise written pass mark for Maryland is quoting something the Board has not published in its rules; the honest preparation target is the competency model itself, covered at working depth, rather than a rumoured figure. One further provision softens the structure usefully: under .05E(3), if the candidate’s limited license has not expired and the candidate passed within the past two years, the Board accepts prior passage of the written part, the practical part, or both — so a candidate who passes one part and not the other re-sits only what is missing, inside that window, even though a failed written part itself must be retaken entire.
The sitting itself
The examination’s conduct is regulated as carefully as its content. The Board selects the site. The examination application is on file at least 30 days before the date. No applicant is examined by an examiner by whom the applicant is employed or with whom the applicant has a contractual relationship — a conflict rule that protects the candidate as much as the public. At the examination, the Board provides each applicant with an identification number to be used on the examination papers, so the work is marked against a number rather than a name. Cheating or dishonesty by an applicant is treated as grounds for failure. The Board is required to provide applicants with up-to-date information on study or reference material that would be beneficial in preparing — a provision worth using: the Board’s own guidance on reference material is the authoritative starting point for a reading list. And COMAR frames the whole sitting with a scope note candidates should take seriously: nothing in the examination implies that the applicant shall possess the degree of medical competence normally expected of physicians. The examination is calibrated to dispensing competence — testing, fitting, referring — and answers pitched at diagnosis miss its register in both directions.
A study plan built on how this examination is actually put together
Build the plan in the order the route imposes. First, use the training months as examination preparation, because Maryland designed them that way. The supervised period covers the examination’s areas by regulation; the trainee who treats those months as employment rather than rehearsal reaches the sitting with experience that was never converted into examined skill. Keep the supervision documentation as a study log: every audiogram taken, every masking decision, every impression, reviewed against the standard the practical part will apply. Second, complete the Distance Learning course early and study from it twice — once to earn the certificate the Board requires on file, and once, closer to the sitting, as the written part’s syllabus in the IHS’s own structure, since the written part is built on the Society’s competency model. Third, drill the practical areas as performances, not as reading: timed audiometry with recording checked afterwards, masking decisions made and justified aloud, impressions taken and inspected against the ear they came from, hearing aid faults found by testing. The 80 percent standard is a performance standard; it is met by performed practice. Fourth, work the referral and testing-procedure rules until they are reflexive — the conditions at COMAR 10.41.08.08F that require referral to a physician, and the minimum testing procedures at .08B — because they are simultaneously examination material, licensing law, and the new licensee’s daily obligations. Fifth, protect the administrative dates: the 30-day application deadline, the limited license’s anniversary, and the two-year outer limit. More Maryland routes are lost to calendars than to audiometry.
The working method: turning supervised hours into examined skill
The characteristic Maryland failure is a trainee with genuine experience who has never performed under examination conditions. The working method that answers it has four parts. Perform to the record. Every training audiogram is recorded as if an examiner will read it — because the habit the practical part scores is exactly that. Narrate the judgement. Masking, aid selection, and referral decisions are spoken aloud with their reasons during training, until the reasoning is audible and therefore correctable by the supervisor; silent competence cannot be coached, and unexamined reasoning is where the practical standard is lost. Rotate the weak area forward. The eight practical areas are logged weekly, and the weakest — impressions for one trainee, speech audiometry for another — takes the largest share of the following week’s supervised practice. Sit a full rehearsal. Before the real date, one complete practical run-through under examination conditions — no prompting, no pausing, work identified by number — because the sitting’s discipline is itself a skill, and the first time a candidate performs under it should not be the sitting that counts.
The errors this examination is built to catch
The Maryland paper and practical catch a recognisable set. Treating the written part as a generic quiz under-prepares against a competency-model paper keyed to current IHS content. Studying audiometry without performing it concedes the practical part’s core. Masking by rote — applying it always or never — fails the one area COMAR singles out as methodology. Neglecting the instrument strand — testing, maintenance, and basic repair — leaves three of the eight areas to chance. Letting the sequence slip: a Distance Learning certificate filed late, an application inside the 30-day line, a limited license expiring with the examination still ahead. And practising beyond the credential’s scope in preparation — studying diagnosis as if the examination rewarded it — wastes the scarcest resource, which is supervised time, on the one thing COMAR expressly says the examination does not imply.
The credential in one view
The Maryland Hearing Aid Dispenser credential in one view is a supervised apprenticeship converted, by examination, into independent practice. The state does not let a candidate test first and train later: it licenses the trainee, prescribes the shape of the supervision down to consecutive days and monthly hours, requires the profession’s standard distance course as a filed certificate, and only then examines — knowledge by the national society’s current competency model, skill by performance across eight areas at 80 percent. Every element of that structure serves the same end: the person who fits a hearing aid on a member of the public in Maryland has been watched doing the work, has been taught the work from a standard curriculum, and has demonstrated the work to examiners with no stake in the outcome. The candidate who studies the route as that single design — rather than as a permit, a course, and a test that happen to share a chapter of COMAR — finds each stage explaining the next: the supervision areas are the practical areas, the course is the written paper’s foundation, and the practice rules the licensee will work under are the same rules the examination was built from.
After the sitting: the credential and its clocks
The full license begins a two-year rhythm. Renewal requires 30 hours of Board-approved continuing education inside each 2-year period, weighted as COMAR prescribes — at least 26 hours in the practice of fitting hearing aids, no more than 4 in managerial subjects, with up to 5 hours available through attendance at Board meetings — and the published biennial renewal fee is $250. The first renewal is prorated by licensure year, as the program page sets out. The working obligations run continuously: minimum testing procedures on every client, test results kept in the client’s record, audiometers calibrated within the previous 12 months with evidence furnished at renewal, referral to a physician on any of the conditions COMAR lists, the license displayed, address changes notified within 30 days, and a receipt for every sale carrying the particulars COMAR requires, with used or reconditioned instruments marked as such. A dispenser who treats renewal as the only obligation misreads the chapter; COMAR 10.41.08 is a practice code with an examination at its front, and the examination’s standards are the practice’s standards, stated once.
Frequently asked questions
Which Maryland regulation governs the Hearing Aid Dispenser examination?
COMAR 10.41.08, Hearing Aid Dispensers. Regulation .05 states the examination’s scope — a written part and a practical part — and regulation .03 states the general examination requirements, including the training and Distance Learning prerequisites. Health Occupations §2-304 provides the statutory basis: the hearing aid dispensing examination consists of a written part and a practical part as required by the Board’s regulations.
Why does this guide describe the written examination in a long sentence instead of a short name?
Because that is how Maryland publishes it. COMAR 10.41.08.05B provides that the written examination shall utilize the most recent competency model licensing examination from the Education Division of the International Hearing Society. The guide quotes the regulation’s own description rather than substituting a shorter label the regulation does not use.
Is there a Maryland law examination for hearing aid dispenser applicants?
Not as part of the standard route. COMAR 10.41.08.03C requires the written and law examinations of an applicant who holds a license to practice medicine and intends to sell hearing aids at retail. For the standard applicant, COMAR .05 prescribes the written part and the practical part, and those are the parts this guide addresses.
How long must I train before I may sit the examination?
Six months of training under the supervision of a licensed hearing aid dispenser, under COMAR 10.41.08.03B — apart from applicants who already hold a valid dispenser license in another state or a license to practice medicine, whom the provision excepts. The training runs under the Limited License, beginning with 20 consecutive days of direct and continuous supervision and continuing at a minimum of 20 supervised hours per month.
Must the Distance Learning course be finished before or after the examination?
Before. COMAR 10.41.08.03E provides that before taking the Hearing Aid Dispensing Examination, a candidate shall provide the Board with a certificate of completion of the International Hearing Society course entitled “Distance Learning for the Professional in Hearing Health Sciences.”
What exactly does the practical examination test?
The eight proficiencies COMAR 10.41.08.05C lists: pure tone audiometry including air and bone conduction testing and recording; speech audiometry including speech reception and speech discrimination testing; masking methodology; choice and adaptation of hearing aids; testing of hearing aids; maintenance and basic repair of hearing aids; taking of ear mold impressions; and other techniques and procedures that may be required to fit hearing aids.
If I pass one part and fail the other, what do I retake?
The part you did not pass — with one refinement. A failed written part is retaken entire, because COMAR provides no partial written credit. But under COMAR 10.41.08.05E(3), if your limited license has not expired and you passed within the past two years, the Board accepts your prior passage of the written part, the practical part, or both, so the passed part stands inside that window.
Who may supervise a limited licensee?
A holder of a valid Maryland hearing aid dispenser license who is actively involved in dispensing hearing aids, has been in practice for a minimum of two years after passing the Board examination, supervises no more than three limited licensees at one time, and has not been formally disciplined by the Board within the previous five years. The supervisor assumes full responsibility for the limited licensee’s ethical conduct.
Can my employer examine me?
No. COMAR 10.41.08.04B provides that an applicant may not be examined by an examiner by whom the applicant is employed or with whom the applicant has a contractual relationship.
What continuing education does renewal require?
Thirty hours of Board-approved continuing education within each 2-year licensing period: 26 or more hours directly relating to the practice of fitting hearing aids, and not more than 4 hours in managerial aspects of the practice — or up to 5 hours of credit in a single cycle for attending regularly scheduled Board meetings, one hour per hour of open session. First renewal is prorated under COMAR 10.41.08.11C.
Does the examination test medical diagnosis?
No. COMAR 10.41.08.05D states that nothing in the examination shall imply that the applicant shall possess the degree of medical competence normally expected of physicians. What the dispenser is examined on instead includes recognising the conditions — listed at COMAR 10.41.08.08F — on which a client must be referred to a physician before fitting or selling a hearing aid.
Is PassProfessor affiliated with the Board or the International Hearing Society?
No. PassProfessor is an independent preparation provider. The Board alone licenses Maryland hearing aid dispensers, and this program is not a Board course and is not the IHS Distance Learning course required before the examination.
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.