The Rhode Island Hearing Aid Dealer and Fitter license, issued by the Rhode Island Department of Health with the Board of Hearing Aid Dealers and Fitters, under Rhode Island General Laws Chapter 5-49, authorizes the holder to engage in the practice of fitting and dealing in hearing aids in Rhode Island. License by examination requires the national examination approved by the Board and a Board-approved practical examination, with Rhode Island law — the hearing aid “lemon law” and the Board’s rules — folded into the examination’s scope, and the route into them runs through a twelve-month Temporary Permit. The PassProfessor Rhode Island Hearing Aid Dealer and Fitter program, described on the companion program page at /rhode-island-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 | Rhode Island Hearing Aid Dealer and Fitter, the Department of Health license for the practice of fitting and dealing in hearing aids in Rhode Island |
| Licensing authority | Rhode Island Department of Health, with the Board of Hearing Aid Dealers and Fitters; R.I. Gen. Laws Chapter 5-49 and the Board’s rules at 216-RICR-40-05-31 |
| Examination | License by examination, in two parts: (1) the national examination approved by the Board — for the written examination, the Board (or its designee) shall administer “the current International Hearing Society or other national examination for hearing aid fitters and dealers, as may be approved by the Board”; and (2) a Board-approved practical examination meeting R.I. Gen. Laws §5-49-9(2). The examination scope additionally includes R.I. Gen. Laws Chapter 6-45 (the so-called “lemon law”) and the Board’s rules |
| Separate law exam | None. Rhode Island has no separate standalone jurisprudence examination; the state-law content is included in the scope of the qualifying examination itself |
| Passing standard | No passing score or percentage is published in the Board’s rules or the statute sections verified for this guide, and none is printed |
| Qualifications | Under R.I. Gen. Laws §5-49-7: at least 21 years of age, of good moral character, with an education equivalent to a four-year course in an accredited high school, and free of contagious or infectious disease |
| Route | Temporary Permit (twelve months, under a licensee’s supervision; renewable or reissued once if the examination is not passed within the year) → written and practical examinations → Hearing Aid Dealer and Fitter license (biennial term) |
| Administrator note | PassProfessor is independent and is not affiliated with the Rhode Island Department of Health, the Board of Hearing Aid Dealers and Fitters, or the International Hearing Society |
Rhode Island rewards candidates who read the credential as the Department and the Board built it: a supervised training permit with an examination set at its end, in a state that writes its consumer-protection law directly into the examination’s scope. A permit opens supervised practice; graded supervision carries the trainee through the year; two examinations — a Board-approved national written paper and a Board-approved practical — test knowledge and proficiency; and the state’s own law, the lemon law and the Board’s rules, runs through the qualifying scope rather than standing beside it. The guide below takes each verified element in turn.
Reading the verified facts
Every fact in the table above was pinned to Rhode Island primary material — the Board’s rules at 216-RICR-40-05-31 and R.I. Gen. Laws Chapter 5-49, including §§5-49-7, 5-49-8, and 5-49-9 — during this program’s research pass. Three reading rules apply. First, the written examination is stated in the rule’s own careful form: the Board, or its designee, shall administer the current International Hearing Society or other national examination for hearing aid fitters and dealers, as may be approved by the Board. The IHS examination is the examination the rule names; the approval is the Board’s; and this guide does not flatten that formulation into a claim the rule does not make. Second, there is no separate jurisprudence examination to schedule, fee, or sit — the lemon law and the Board’s rules are inside the qualifying examination’s scope under §31.3.5 of the rules, in addition to the §5-49-9 scope, and any preparation plan that lists a standalone Rhode Island law test has invented one. Third, no passing score is printed, because none is published in the rules or statute sections verified: the documents speak of successful completion and of persons successfully passing the examinations, without a number, and converting that silence into a percentage would invent a fact.
The route, step by step
Step one — qualify under §5-49-7. The applicant for license by examination must be at least twenty-one years of age, of good moral character, possessed of an education equivalent to a four-year course in an accredited high school, and free of contagious or infectious disease. Those four qualifications also gate the Temporary Permit, which turns on the same age, character, education, and health requirements.
Step two — obtain the Temporary Permit and train under graded supervision. Previous experience or a waiting period is expressly not required. On application to the Department, accompanied by the fee the statute’s fee provision sets, the Department issues a permit entitling the applicant to engage in the fitting and sale of hearing aids for one year. Supervision is a legal structure, not an informality: the licensed hearing aid dealer and fitter who takes responsibility for the permit holder’s supervision and training must maintain adequate personal contact, and the rules define direct supervision as the supervisor personally authorizing and overseeing the permit holder’s activities, remaining on-site while they are performed, and reviewing the results. The intensity is graded — twenty hours per week of direct supervision for the first thirty days of training; review of all audiograms, sales, and other records for the second thirty days; and periodic review of audiograms, sales, and other records for the remainder of the training period. An audiologist may supervise instead, but only on the statute’s conditions: at least two years of active clinical experience in dispensing and fitting hearing aids, documentary evidence of that experience provided to the Department, and the Department’s written approval to supervise and train. If the permit holder has not successfully passed the licensing examination within one year of issuance, the permit may be renewed or reissued once, on payment of the fee — one extension, not a rolling traineeship.
Step three — sit the examinations. Applicants for license by examination shall appear at a time, place, and before such persons as the Department may designate, to be examined by means of written and practical tests in order to demonstrate that they are qualified to practice the fitting and sale of hearing aids. The application the rules require assembles the proof: a completed application, the license fee as set forth in the Department’s fee structure, verification of successful completion of the national examination approved by the Board, and successful completion of a practical examination approved by the Board. The Department gives examinations as required; the rules verified for this guide publish no fixed calendar, item counts, or venue list, and candidates take their sitting arrangements from the Department’s designation.
Step four — the license, and what follows a failure. The Department issues to each person successfully passing the examinations, and who otherwise satisfies the Department of their qualifications, a license entitling them to practice the business in this state for the biennial period stated in the license, or until it is revoked or suspended. The license must be conspicuously posted in the licensee’s office or place of business, with duplicate certificates issued for each additional location, and the licensee must notify the Department of the regular address of their place or places of business. For the unsuccessful candidate, the rules are exact: the applicant is entitled to re-examinations, with any examination fees resubmitted on re-examination — but an applicant who fails to pass the written and practical examinations twice is not eligible for further examinations until they have satisfactorily completed additional preparation as directed and approved by the Board, and that condition applies to each subsequent failure as well. A parallel door exists for practitioners from elsewhere: license by endorsement, on the application and fee with verification that the applicant is in good standing in all states and territories where they hold or have held a license or certification to engage in this practice.
The outline in full
Rhode Island’s examination has no single blueprint document a candidate can download; it has a statutory scope, §5-49-9, extended by a rule, §31.3.5, and two instruments built to that scope — the Board-approved national written examination and the Board-approved practical. They are stated here in full, because in Rhode Island the three layers interlock: the statute names the knowledge and the techniques, the rule adds the state’s law, and the permit year’s supervised practice is where the techniques are learned.
The written examination: knowledge, in the statute’s three areas plus one
Section 5-49-9(1) frames the knowledge tests as they pertain to the fitting and sale of hearing aids: basic physics of sound — the acoustics on which every measurement and every instrument specification rests; the anatomy and physiology of the ear — the system whose impairment the fitter measures and compensates for; and the function of hearing aids — what the instruments do, and by extension what they cannot do. Section 5-49-9(3) adds a fourth, distinctly Rhode Island knowledge area: knowledge of the medical and rehabilitation facilities for children and adults in the area being served — the referral landscape a fitter must know because the fitter’s scope ends where medicine and rehabilitation begin. The instrument that carries this knowledge is the national examination the Board approves, administered by the Board or its designee in the rule’s form quoted above. Two statutory guards frame the paper: the examination as directed by the Board shall not be conducted in a manner that requires college training in order to pass, and nothing in it implies that the applicant possesses the degree of medical competence normally expected of physicians. The written examination, in short, tests a trade’s knowledge at a trade’s depth — thoroughly, and within its defined limits.
The practical examination: the five techniques of §5-49-9(2)
The Board shall adopt a practical examination that meets the requirements of §5-49-9(2), and that subsection is a complete syllabus of the fitting encounter in five techniques. Pure tone audiometry, including air conduction testing and bone conduction testing — the threshold measurement on which everything else is built, in both its pathways, because the comparison between them is itself diagnostic information the fitter must handle correctly within the fitter’s scope. Live voice or recorded voice speech audiometry, including speech reception threshold testing and speech discrimination testing — the speech measures that test hearing as it is actually used, and that check the pure tone record against functional performance. Masking when indicated — stated conditionally in the statute, which is the point: the examined skill is the judgement of when the non-test ear is participating, and the technique that answers it. Recording and evaluating audiograms and speech audiometry to determine proper selection and adaptation of a hearing aid — the interpretive step that converts measurement into a fitting decision, and the step at which the practical stops testing hands and starts testing reasoning. Taking earmold impressions — the physical craft on which custom fittings depend. Read as a sequence, the five techniques are one client visit: measure by tone, measure by speech, keep the measurements honest, reason from them to an instrument, and capture the ear the instrument must fit. Preparation that drills them as five unrelated stations misses the examination’s design, which is the encounter itself.
The Rhode Island law inside the scope: the lemon law and the Board’s rules
Section 31.3.5 of the rules provides that, in addition to the §5-49-9 scope, the qualifying examination shall include two bodies of Rhode Island law. The first is R.I. Gen. Laws Chapter 6-45, the so-called “lemon law” — titled in the Act’s own receipt language the Enforcement of Assistive Technology Warranties. It is the warranty-enforcement law that stands behind every hearing aid sold in the state: the receipt a licensee must deliver to each person supplied with a hearing aid is required to state, in conspicuous type, that a hearing aid will not restore normal hearing, that the purchaser has a thirty-day trial period during which the instrument may be returned in its original condition less normal wear with no further financial obligation, and that the product is protected by Chapter 6-45, which the dispenser shall make available on request. The second body is the rules and regulations contained in the Board’s rules part itself — the licensure requirements, the certificate-of-need and records provisions, and the prohibited acts framework the licensee will practise under. That rules territory is concrete: no sale without the purchaser’s certificate of need, signed by a Rhode Island-licensed physician on an otological examination no more than six months old, unless the adult purchaser signs the informed waiver statement the rules describe, retained for no less than three years; the special examination requirements protecting children ten and under; the duty, before delivery, to discuss amplification and aural rehabilitation options appropriate to the patient’s loss and communication needs and to provide information on circuitry, telecoils, programmability, and estimated prices; and the permanent transaction records, with certificate or waiver attached, retained for three years and open to inspection by the Director’s designees. There is no separate jurisprudence sitting in which to meet this material later; it is in the qualifying examination, and it is in the first year of practice, in the same form.
What Rhode Island does not publish — and why that matters
A slower pass over the gaps is worthwhile, because Rhode Island’s documents are unusually complete about scope and unusually silent about metrics, and candidates misread both halves. What is published: the examination’s full statutory scope, the written examination’s form and administrator, the practical’s governing subsection, the re-examination and preparation conditions, the permit’s term and supervision grades, and the license’s biennial clock. What is not published in the rules or statute sections verified: a passing score or percentage for either examination; the written examination’s item count, time limit, or schedule; the practical examination’s stations, timings, or dates. This guide prints none of those figures, because inventing them would misdirect preparation — a candidate aiming at a rumoured percentage is aiming at nothing Rhode Island set. The honest targets are the published ones: the §5-49-9 scope covered at working depth, the five techniques performed to standard, and the lemon law and Board rules known as the qualifying scope requires. Sitting logistics come from the Department, which designates the time, place, and presiding persons for the examinations, and candidates should take dates, venues, and current fee amounts from the Department’s own current publications rather than from any secondary source — including, on those operational points, this guide.
A study plan built on how this examination is actually put together
Build the plan in the order the statute builds the scope. First, the performed techniques — the practical’s five: pure tone air and bone conduction runs, speech audiometry with its threshold and discrimination measures, masking decisions made and defended aloud, audiograms recorded and evaluated into a selection, and impressions taken as one unbroken procedure, rehearsed on real people under the permit year’s supervision, because that supervision is the preparation structure Rhode Island designed. Second, the knowledge core — sound, the ear, and hearing aid function studied as the written examination’s framed territory, tied at every point to the fitting and sale they pertain to, plus the medical and rehabilitation facilities knowledge §5-49-9(3) requires for the area served. Third, Rhode Island law as its own subject, finished early — Chapter 6-45 and the Board’s rules, including the certificate-of-need, waiver, child-protection, receipt, and records provisions, studied as the qualifying scope’s express content rather than as practice trivia. Fourth, the permit clock — examinations planned inside the permit year, with the single renewal or reissuance treated as contingency rather than schedule, and with the two-failure rule in view: the cheapest preparation Rhode Island offers is the preparation done before the first sitting, because after the second failure the Board directs it.
The working method: turning the scope into a performance
Rhode Island preparation fails most often as a modality problem: candidates study a proficiency examination as if it were a reading examination, and study its law as if it were an afterthought Rhode Island appended. The working method that answers it has four parts. Perform weekly, under the supervisor’s eye. The permit year’s graded supervision — on-site and reviewing everything early, periodic later — is a built-in rehearsal regime; use its review points as examination checkpoints, with every corrected audiogram and every re-done impression logged. An error log keyed to the scope. Every missed knowledge item, misjudged masking decision, weak speech measure, and misremembered rule filed under its heading — written knowledge, practical technique, Rhode Island law — so that after a month the log, not the candidate’s confidence, assigns the remaining study. Law learned as transactions. The lemon law, certificate of need, waiver, receipt, and records rules applied to worked sales — a purchaser, a child purchaser, a return inside the trial period, a warranty failure — because the qualifying scope tests the law of a working practice, and the licensee will operate it the same way. One honest mock encounter. Before the sitting, run the five techniques in the statute’s sequence on one person, start to finish, as a single visit: the examination’s design is the encounter, and the candidate who has rehearsed the encounter has rehearsed the examination.
The errors this examination is built to catch
The Rhode Island set catches a recognisable set. Preparing for a separate law exam that does not exist — and, in the confusion, under-preparing the law that is inside the qualifying scope. Treating the written examination as a generic national paper and skipping the facilities knowledge §5-49-9(3) adds, or the Rhode Island scope the rules add to it. Studying the practical as theory meets an examination that watches the candidate perform five techniques of daily practice. Masking by routine rather than by indication fails the statute’s own conditional — masking when indicated is a judgement test wearing a technique’s clothes. Letting the permit year drift collides with a permit that may be renewed or reissued only once, and with graded supervision that is densest at the start of the year, when examination preparation should be densest too. And sitting unprepared on the theory of unlimited retakes meets the two-failure rule: after the second failure, the Board directs the preparation, on the Board’s terms, before any further sitting.
The credential in one view
The Rhode Island Hearing Aid Dealer and Fitter license in one view is a supervised year capped by a scope that refuses to separate skill from law. A permit holder learns the trade under a licensee’s graded eye — closely at first, at review distance later — while the state prepares to test the learning exactly as the statute wrote it: knowledge of sound, ear, and instrument; proficiency in the five techniques of the fitting encounter; knowledge of the facilities to which clients must be referred; and the lemon law and Board rules that govern every sale the new licensee will ever make. The examination is the permit year’s mirror image: the supervision grades from direct to periodic as competence is demonstrated, and the qualifying scope asks the candidate to demonstrate, once and completely, what the year was for. The candidate who studies it as that single design — measure honestly, reason from the record, know the referral landscape, and sell inside the law — finds its parts reinforcing each other, because in Rhode Island practice they are the same act.
After the sittings: the license and its clocks
The license issues for the biennial period stated in it, and all licenses expire on January 31 of each even-numbered year unless sooner suspended or revoked, renewed for the next two years on a renewal application and the biennial fee in the Department’s fee structure — a shared statewide deadline, which makes renewal a calendar discipline rather than a personal anniversary. The license hangs conspicuously in the place of business, duplicates cover additional offices, and the Department holds the licensee’s business addresses on notice. Daily practice then runs on the rules the examination tested: certificates of need obtained and filed, waivers signed and retained three years, children’s examinations ascertained before a sale, transaction records kept permanently with their attachments and open to inspection for three years, receipts carrying the trial-period and lemon law notices, and amplification and rehabilitation options discussed before delivery. Complaints, revocation and suspension proceedings, and penalties run under the Act’s own provisions — §5-49-12 and §5-49-19 as the rules cite them — which is the final sense in which the qualifying scope was honest: the law inside the examination is the law of the working license, stated in advance.
Frequently asked questions
Which Rhode Island sources govern this route?
R.I. Gen. Laws Chapter 5-49 — especially §5-49-7 (qualifications and license by examination), §5-49-8 (temporary permits), and §5-49-9 (scope of examination) — and the Board’s rules at 216-RICR-40-05-31, especially §31.3 on licensure and §31.3.5 on the examination’s extended scope.
Why is the written examination described so carefully on this page?
Because the rule is careful. Section 31.3.4 provides that the Board, or its designee, shall administer the current International Hearing Society or other national examination for hearing aid fitters and dealers, as may be approved by the Board. The IHS examination is the one the rule names, and Board approval is the mechanism; this guide states the requirement in that form rather than simplifying it into something the rule does not say.
Is there a Rhode Island jurisprudence examination I need to book separately?
No. There is no standalone jurisprudence examination in Rhode Island. Under §31.3.5, the qualifying examination itself includes R.I. Gen. Laws Chapter 6-45 — the lemon law — and the rules and regulations in the Board’s rules part, in addition to the §5-49-9 scope.
What should I do after a first unsuccessful attempt?
Use the re-examination right as written — re-examination is available with the examination fees resubmitted — but prepare as if the stakes the rules set are real, because they are: a second failure to pass the written and practical examinations makes further examinations conditional on completing additional preparation as directed and approved by the Board, and that condition repeats after each subsequent failure.
Does the examination require college training, or test medical competence?
No, on the statute’s own terms: the examination as directed by the Board shall not be conducted in a manner that requires college training in order to pass, and nothing in it implies the applicant possesses the degree of medical competence normally expected of physicians. The education qualification is an education equivalent to a four-year course in an accredited high school.
Can an audiologist supervise a Temporary Permit holder?
Yes, on conditions: the audiologist must have at least two years of active clinical experience in dispensing and fitting hearing aids, provide the Department documentary evidence of that experience, and receive the Department’s written approval to supervise and train applicants. Otherwise, supervision and training rest with a licensed hearing aid dealer and fitter, who must maintain adequate personal contact with the permit holder.
What does the graded supervision in the rules actually require?
Twenty hours per week of direct supervision — the supervisor personally authorizing and overseeing the activities, on-site, and reviewing the results — for the first thirty days of training; review of all audiograms, sales, and other records for the second thirty days; and periodic review of those records for the remainder of the training period.
What is the “lemon law” the examination includes?
R.I. Gen. Laws Chapter 6-45, titled in the Act’s receipt language the Enforcement of Assistive Technology Warranties — Rhode Island’s warranty-enforcement law for assistive technology, which the required sales receipt must tell every purchaser protects the product, making the chapter available on request. Its companion disclosure in the same receipt is the thirty-day trial period, during which the purchaser may return the instrument in its original condition less normal wear with no further financial obligation.
How does license by endorsement differ from license by examination?
The endorsement applicant, licensed or certified elsewhere, submits the application and the fee with verification of good standing in all states and territories where they hold or have held a license or certification in this practice, instead of the examination verifications the examination route requires.
Is PassProfessor affiliated with the Department of Health, the Board, or IHS?
No. PassProfessor is an independent preparation provider. The Department alone licenses; the Board approves the examinations the rules describe.
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.