To understand what is going on, you need to understand the anatomy of the ear. Normally the eardrum vibrates, which moves the little bones in the ear, which transfer the vibrations to the cochlea, which sends sound to the brain.

The issue at hand is that the small bones (the staples in this case) can basically get gunked up with bone stuff, which prevents transferring vibrations from the ear drum to the cochlea.

Early on they used staples mobilization to knock the bone crud off. The problem is sometimes mobilizing the staples caused the fluid to leak out of the inner ear. This fluid is used for balance, so this would cause vertigo.

The next step was completely bypassing the staples and the ear drum by drilling a hole in the back of the head that lead directly to the cochlea. Not only is this not as effective at hearing as a fully-functioning ear, but people feel strongly about having extra holes in their head, to the extent that extra holes in your head are used as an example of something that is extremely undesirable in a common figure of speech.

This guy comes along and decides he should maybe test patients to see if they have bone crud on their staples before he drills holes in their heads, so as to make sure that they are actually treating the right problem. This involves pushing on the staples a bit to see if they are frozen.

While preparing to drill a hole in the head of one patient, he determines that he indeed has bone crud on his staples. He decides to see what happens if he pushes a bit harder. He breaks the staple free, thus eliminating the need to drill a hole in his patients skull.

His patient is really excited about getting his hearing back without increasing the number of holes in his head. He is so excited, he asks the doctor to push gently on the other side.