Dr. Emily J. Taylor says she’s on a mission: to promote hearing health in the mainstream of American public life.
For more than a decade, Dr. Taylor, a Pikesville-based clinical audiologist, has cared for patients while educating the public at large about how to prevent different types of hearing loss.
And now, with nearly 1 million followers on the social media platform TikTok, people around the world – particularly young people — are watching Dr. Taylor’s videos about hearing health on a regular basis.
“Noise-induced hearing loss is the only preventable type of hearing loss, yet we aren’t telling people how to prevent it,” says Dr. Taylor, 34. “No one is educating kids about the dangers of noise exposure. It’s not talked about in health class.”
More than 30 million Americans are annually exposed to potentially hearing-damaging noise, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
Dr. Taylor says she is one of those people.
“I’ve always loved concerts, and I remember having a hard time falling asleep after concerts because of ringing in my ears and feeling dizzy from how loud the music was when I worked as a bartender in college,” she says. “I didn’t know what it meant though, because no one taught me the risks. But once I started learning about it in my audiology classes, I started wearing custom hearing protection whenever I went to concerts, weddings or loud restaurants and bars.”
In addition to being a social media sensation, Dr. Taylor is founder of the Taylor Listening Center, a private audiology practice she started in 2013 in Pikesville.
“My practice is 100 percent patient-focused, and I measure my success through our reputation and how we make people feel,” says Dr. Taylor, who grew up in the community and attended Temple Oheb Shalom. “I don’t think finances should dictate how well you hear, so I do everything in my power to help all my patients.”
Dr. Taylor says she always knew she wanted a patient-focused career in the medical field, but never learned about audiology until college when a family friend introduced her to the field.
After graduating from the University of Maryland, Dr. Taylor went on to a four-year graduate program at Towson University, where she immersed herself in anatomy, physiology, cadaver dissection, balance and dizziness disorders, hearing testing and more.
“Audiologists are the experts in vertigo, tinnitus and hearing testing,” says Dr. Taylor, who has a doctorate in audiology and spent years working at various audiological and ENT (ear, nose and throat) practices to gain as much knowledge as possible.
Dr. Taylor says her goal is to provide patients with the best possible care. “There is no one size fits all because the process is different for every patient,” she says. “At Taylor Listening Center, it’s about the relationships we are building with our patients.”
Dr. Taylor notes that altruism and philanthropy are a major component of her life and medical practice.
“The first time I did this was for the Israeli Defense Force,” Dr. Taylor says. “There was a need in Israel, so I decided proceeds from hearing testing would go to the IDF. After that, I realized there was this need locally, so I shifted gears and each month I pick a different local nonprofit. I pick charities that have meaning to me or my patients. Both my grandfathers had Alzheimer’s [disease] and my grandmother had [multiple sclerosis], so those charities are on the list.”
Dr. Taylor says she considers her patients her second family.
“When I had my twins, patients sent me gifts to put in their college funds, and one patient got them both little kiddush cups which we use today,” she says. “A lot of my patients are in their final stages of life, and I grieve their loss when they pass away, which is something I didn’t prepare for as an audiologist.”
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