Latest / Here to Serve - A United Regional Podcast / Kristi Mahan, Speech Language Pathologist (SLP)
Transcript
- United Regional: Welcome to Here to Serve, a United Regional podcast. I'm your host, Ryan Graves. My favorite part of being the Director of Patient Experience at United Regional is the incredible people that I meet and work with on a daily basis. And I want you to meet them too. Join us to meet the people behind the badge and to highlight those who are here to serve. All right, Kristi, welcome to the Here to Serve podcast. Well, thank you for having me. I'm really excited to be here. Awesome. Well, I know we'll have a great conversation today. Let's start off with just tell me who you are, what you do at United Regional. Okay, my name is Kristi Mahan. I'm a speech pathologist. Not Monica. Not Monica. Okay. lot of people know me as Monica, but I prefer to go by Kristi, which is part of my middle name, Christine. But yeah, I'm a speech pathologist at United Regional. I've been there, I guess this is my 19th year. ⁓ but my 31st year as a speech pathologist. Where were you before here? Before here, I was 10 years at North Texas Rehab Center, which I loved dearly. ⁓ And then before that, I worked in a private practice for three years. Both of those provided me a wealth of information and I got great mentorship. And so I feel like it really gave me a good firm foundation for being here. So 19 years, fun fact, sounds like we started almost at the same, I think we started in the same year. I think You started in 07? 07, That's awesome. 07, 19 years, we're about to be 20. Yeah. How did you end up at United Regional? What brought you to United Regional? So. it, was United Regional at the time? okay. Yes, it was. There had been the merger. Actually, Alaina Connor, who we call the veteran of the speech pathology department. called me, reached out to me and said, hey, you we have an opening. I know in the past you've kind of expressed some interest. I think that, you know, that we could really do some great things around here. ⁓ so I remember we met at a park, we sat on a park bench and we talked about it. And it was just shortly after that I applied for the job and was fortunate enough to get it. So we stole you. We recruited and stole you. No, we did not steal me. ⁓ I was actually in a place where I had two kids under five and it just provided a better work-life balance. I was working, you know, much later at the rehab center to accommodate, you know, children who needed to come after school. So it was just the right fit for a lot of reasons. Yeah. Well, we're sure glad you're here. Thank you. I love it so much. You're I would call. I hope this. I don't think it would be insulting to call you like a staple of United Region. I like your. That's that's a compliment. Yeah. Sure. I. I feel like it's a family. love it there. I often joke with my manager, Joel, I'm like, if you couldn't pay me anymore, I would still be here. Like I love it. I love helping people. I love changing lives. It's a mission for me. So, yeah, I can't imagine myself anywhere else. And I plan to finish out here if I can. Yeah, I'm sure you will, I have no doubt. And I find it interesting and I want to talk more about your background in my speech therapy, but... you just mentioned something about, know, I'm drawn to this work, I would do this work for free. I think that is genuinely the key to, ⁓ maybe just joy in life in general and meaning in life in general is finding meaning in your work. ⁓ Talk to me a little bit about that. Was it always that way? Have you developed that over time? Where do you think that comes from? I think just... My parents provided that as a model growing up. I I came from a very caring and loving home. ⁓ We helped people in the community. We had a service-based industry, you know, where we helped people. My dad had a backhoe service, and he, you know, we just helped people when they needed it. And then I just, you know, found a lot of joy in helping and volunteering. And so I think I just kind of stumbled onto Helping people, I didn't know what profession initially I wanted to be in. I thought I was gonna be maybe in criminal justice, which is kind of funny looking back on that I would be a probation officer. I wish I could see that. I know. You know, I was gonna save the world one kid at a time, but I went to school at TCU and I actually was required to take a foreign language elective and I ended up in the sign language. as a class and I fell in love with the ability to like have an avenue to help people communicate whether it was with their children who were deaf or like learning gestural language for somebody who had had a stroke. So ⁓ taking that class threw me into the communications and science department and then from there I changed my major and six years later I was a speech pathologist. Wow I absolutely love that story. So many things I want to unpack about that, but let's I want to start at the first one of the first things you said is You were watched your parents and I'm gonna paraphrase this you tell me if I get it wrong You watched your parents serve others right and said I I want to do that I want to make I want to make a difference I want to serve I'm not sure how I'm not sure where but somehow I want to serve it I'll just say that's one of the core beliefs in my life. Is that the the only path? To satisfaction in life and we all try a lot of different paths But the only one I've ever found that's meaningful is service to others, right? That's it. And when you figure that out and go, I wanna serve, I gotta find where that is and find my place to serve and make a difference. When you find that though, you hold onto it. I agree. I couldn't agree more. That's awesome. And that's another thing that I love about the hospital is not only do we get the opportunity to serve and help others as patients, but we also get the opportunity to serve. the employees, you know, I'm on a couple of committees where we've had the opportunity to really just, you know, lift up and serve and help, you know, employees feel valued and provide opportunities for them to kind of, you know, relax a little bit and enjoy life because it can be a very daunting career, helping sick people all the time. So, yeah, it is, it's, it's, it's exceedingly rewarding, but also with anything that's rewarding, it can be just terribly difficult and draining. so ⁓ it sounds like, I believe you're on the rewards and recognition. Also brand ambassadors, you're on both of those. ⁓ Rewards and recognition, we've actually had that crew on here to talk about all that they do, but how did you get into that? What pulled you in there? When I first came to the hospital, I saw... a group of people who were on that committee and they were doing the fun stuff. I wanted I want on that team. And so ⁓ I tried for a couple of years to kind of break in to that. ⁓ And then I guess I got it. You know, I got Joel convinced to let me serve on that. And ⁓ again, it has been one of the biggest blessings because I I love providing opportunities for our employees to feel loved on and ⁓ to give them opportunities to celebrate. This year we had for the first time our gala, which really was a great opportunity for those who've served in increments of five years up through 50 years. to come out and we had this amazing meal for them and a guest speaker and just the recognition they deserved. so- I heard so much, I wasn't there for that event. I heard so much positive feedback about that. Which, hey, next year, me and you are 20 years, so would we get- I think it's the year after. Okay, I got a couple years then. We've got a couple years. And then also like hospital week which is- I think a spectacular week full of events to just celebrate who we are and all the hard work that we've done. This year's gonna be a great theme. We're gonna have talent show, lots of food trucks and games. I think that people appreciate it. I feel like they do. It's one of the things that makes us unique. Just to, I think, pointing out the obvious here, but it seems like a core value to you is I wanna make a difference and I wanna serve others. And I think a lot of times people assume that's just we're just serving our patients and that we absolutely are, they're the reason we exist. But it's much more than that. We're in service to each other. And I could ⁓ almost bring this down to just make it one word and that word is others. Like outward focus, focusing on others. And there's something really special that happens when you say, wanna be outward focused and others focus is it takes the... We're all, think, humans by nature, just kind of selfishly wired to think of ourselves. And then I pull myself out of that and I start looking for opportunities to serve. And then you see what you're looking for. Right? So if I'm looking for what can be done for me, what can you do for me? That's a pretty miserable existence in my experience. Right? would completely agree. Will you agree with that? Yes. But when I, then I start, that's my whole perspective on life is just what can this organization do for me? What can this community do for me? What can this person across from me do for me? ⁓ That's pretty miserable. And then you switch it around and you start saying, what can I do for them? What can I do? And you start seeing the things that you can do. So the reason that my head goes here is I think about you coming to United Regional as a speech therapist. you didn't come as, you came as a speech therapist and you said, What else can I do? I want to do more. I want to do speech therapy, but I also want to serve my coworkers. I want to serve my team. And so then you found those opportunities. And those opportunities turn into other opportunities where you're like, hey, not only am I, found an opportunity to serve my team, but I also found an opportunity to serve on Brand Ambassadors. And I don't know, just the more you start to look for those things, you start to see them. Is that track with you? does. And I like that we have a culture of it's not. about the dollar. It's really about serving others. It's about learning. It's about mentorship. It's about getting out and representing to the community like we're people just like you. And so I like that we have those opportunities like the brand ambassadors with something new this year. Kristi Faulkner thought and has had this wonderful idea of like let's tell people who we are. We're not a building on the corner of grace and a letter. We're a group of people you know who love what we do. We love the community. ⁓ you know, we've really had the opportunity to look at some data and really come up with some ways we can improve the way we're doing things. We can, you get more involved in the community. So ⁓ that has also been really rewarding to me. I've learned so much more about the hospital ⁓ than I ever knew. So I love that I'm actually scheduled to come back. I think. My understanding with the brand ambassadors group is they're like you you rotate into like a more different position and others fresh Rotate in so I'm scheduled to actually come in and speak to that new group And I'm super excited because that is such a fun group to talk to there So and I didn't really catch and that Kristi and I've already talked about this at one point So it's not it won't surprise her I didn't have the vision for this that she did when she was talking about this I was kind like, I don't know. mean try it I don't not that she was asking my opinion about it But I was like, I just didn't see it when she presented about it didn't see I didn't catch the vision And after just a little while of doing it, I'm going, ⁓ I see the vision for this. It's been such a cool thing. And it's, I believe it is truly driving positive change in our organization. More importantly in the community, because it is, I think there's this temptation. ⁓ and I might do it too. If I didn't work here, you drive by and you see a big building and in every movie, who are the bad guys? Like in every movie, the bad guys are in a big building, right? Like they're the evil. And so you just see a big building and you go, ⁓ well, the people in there must be. know, underhanded somehow. And like, you if you work there, you know that that's not the case. It's a, it's literally a group of people that, that care about each other, care about their patients, care about the community. Not perfect by any means, but it's a good group of people and you guys are helping get that, I feel like getting that word out. I mean, we know we're not without flaws and we have room for improvement. And so as a second year brand investor this year, we're really working on some. specific service projects within the hospital. don't know, service project is the right word, some quality improvement projects, you know, around workflows and perception and things. So that's gonna be kind of exciting to see how, you know, we're able to make some changes within the hospital and the community's perception of how we did on those. That is to me is I love stuff like this because it is innovative and it's new and we don't even know where it's going exactly. But we're out here doing it. You you guys are out there just going, hey, let's continue to grow this and evolve it and change it. And that's exciting. I've heard a couple of a few folks from the committee reach out to me about different projects that they're thinking about. And it's all exciting stuff. So I'm excited to see where it goes. Talk to me about we haven't actually talked about really speech therapy yet. So tell me. and you told me a little bit about what pulled you into speech therapy. Tell me what is speech therapy, what does it do for our patients? I know that's probably like a broad, huge question, but talk to me about that. I limited in time, but it is a wide scope. But basically speech pathology is at the core. Now, that the right term, is speech pathology not speech therapy? Because I say They are used interchangeably a lot. Speech pathology is the scope of really just helping people basically. in the domains of communication and swallowing. And I'll kind of narrow it down to the hospital since that's what we're talking about. like within the communication domain, we're doing everything from speech impairment, like slurred speech after a stroke or loss of language, whether that's be they can't understand or they're having trouble speaking, changes in cognition, meaning memory changes, and then that can be. Like from a trauma, somebody had a head injury or maybe with aging, dementia, voice changes. Maybe we've worked with restoring a voice, somebody who lost their larynx to cancer or had to have a trach placed and they're no longer able to phonate. We do things with, you know, disfluency or someone maybe with a debilitating disease like ALS, we're able to help kind of equip them with a communication device. So there's a large scope of what we do there and certainly swallowing is probably even a greater part of what we do in the hospital. ⁓ I love that ⁓ it encompasses the whole life span. We are treating ⁓ infants in the NICU, like my youngest patient is 28 weeks old. ⁓ And this week I had someone who was 90. ⁓ Being able to improve someone's quality of life, whether that's restoring their ability to swallow something again after a stroke or provide them with the ability to communicate after they've had part of their voice box removed or whether that is teaching a parent how to feed their premature infant for the first time. for me does not get more rewarding. Like it brings tears to my eyes. Wait, listen, I've only cried once on this podcast. You better not, and I've caught so much grief from it. So don't make me, I cry super easy. Don't make me cry today. Well, let me give you this example. I was back home in Kuala Lumpur this weekend for Easter and this family friend of ours, she's turning 98. Oh my goodness. And she called me up over after church and she grabbed my face in her little hands and she said, I don't know if you remember working with my husband when he was in the hospital, and this is probably 15 years ago, after he was so sick and you taught him to say, I love you. And those were like some of his last words. And I said, I do, I remember very clearly. And that's why I do this because I... love restoring those abilities. Is that a phrase that you normally teach patients? Tell me about why do you teach them, love you. When we're working with stroke patients and they have aphasia, in the most severe cases, it's almost like they're locked in and can't communicate, like even their basic wants and needs. it's heartbreaking for families, it's extremely frustrating for patients. But if you can just get the core. of who they are and the things that they would want to communicate to their family and start with a phrase like, love you. Even if it's, I love you and it takes you 30 minutes to get it out, there is nothing more rewarding than that patient being able to open up their heart and share that with their family. It's just, it's a beacon of hope. It sometimes is an icebreaker to get other things to communicate or to be able to come out. But I just find that even the most severe patients, find a way to get those keywords out. And if not, we work on gestures and we do the I love you, you know? And again, I think it's just, it's a beacon of hope. know, it's like, if I cannot say anything the rest of my life, I want my family to know how I feel. I want my spouse or my kids, you know, to know how I feel. So it's just often a place I like to start. Well, we talked about it earlier, a communication is so central to the human experience, but even more central than that is love. So even in the worst scenarios where people may not be able to communicate maybe any other words, you're still able to get those three words out of them. That speaks to the humanness of healthcare like nothing else I could think of, you know. ⁓ And talked about AI a lot on this podcast. We haven't talked about it today, but ⁓ I'm a huge fan. I think we're doing really cool technical stuff with AI. but that is something AI can't do and can never understand. The soul of a human that can say I love you even if they can't get anything else out. That is one of the most important things and the thing that we have to stay focused on in healthcare is the love. The personal touch. That's it because it's human. It is central to humanity and it's the most powerful thing we have by far. We're so fortunate in this community to have so many great rehabs. And we also have our outpatient, I don't want to not mention them too, our outpatient therapy services who really do provide great services along the continuum. yeah, sorry that got kind of deep. No, that's all, I ⁓ love it. That's why we're here is that's the stuff I want to hear. These are the things that drive you. These are the things that matter. ⁓ And I want to, I want to circle back to something that was kind of just connecting as you were, as you were talking through this, was. things connected in my brain about speech therapy or speech pathology, speech therapy. And by the way, I just want credit that I didn't say PT because I so many times in my silly brain, I'll be like, ⁓ it's physical therapy. And they're like, Ryan, it's rehab services. Physical therapy is one of a massive amount of work that we do. as occupational therapy. are a team of three. SD, OT, right? Yes. And I'll sing their praises here in a minute. They're amazing. And I've got a testimonial about ⁓ rehab services as well for me personally. But I want to I want to circle back to your origin story. you take a sign language class. In the sign language class, you go, whoa, I could help someone who otherwise I couldn't communicate with, or that they couldn't communicate or I couldn't. And now I'm giving them back the ability to communicate, which is central to being a human. Right. It's one of the things that that makes us human and able to connect with other humans is the ability to communicate And then eating falls right there too, right? It's one of the things that's central to being human and so That just the fact that that clicked with you and you said hey, this is the path I'm gonna go on it is a specialized path, right? It's a specialized path, but What sacred work that is central to the human experience to be able to say? I can give this person or help move this person back into a path where they can communicate with their family. wow. And they can actually, if you don't eat, nothing happens after that, right? You gotta be able to eat. And even if it's not even just for the nutrition, but the enjoyment of food, that is a part of the human existence. And some of us enjoy it more than others. ⁓ yeah, that's incredible. I, to be honest, had never really put the sacredness of that together. And I think that's one of the things that makes healthcare so special and why I love this podcast is because ⁓ there are so many, we have thousands of people across this organization doing incredible, sacred, special things that don't even click in my brain sometimes of how incredible it is. could not ⁓ agree more. And just, you know, the privilege of getting to work. like I said, with rehab services. So we're a team of physical therapists, occupational therapists, speech pathologists, and we have our rehab techs. we, you know, we're like, I'm gonna say about 30 people, and we are a family, and we're there for each other, whether it's during the work day or the things that in life that come up. And so, you know, that's been a privilege. And just the relationships that have developed. You know, said, know, Elena called and we started, this department is two, we're now six speech pathologists. and that's come through hard work. It's come through dedication, stretching ourselves, being pushed by management and directors who believed in us. They make sure we have the best education. We have a robust education. They send us places. have Jennifer going to the World Trake Conference and presenting. We have Elena going to Cook Children's to learn more about these little neonates. And I think they've just made it possible for us to be at the bedside and provide the very best care because there is nothing as heartbreaking as meeting someone who's broken. And I mean that in the sense of... They're scared, they want the ability to communicate again, they want the ability to eat again and just being there for them, whether it's I hear you, I see you, I know you're in there giving them a hand, it's not uncommon to pray for a family and just encourage them. We find new ways to get them better faster. We've collaborated with so many departments. We're working real closely with ⁓ neurosurgery, we see all their cervical spine patients to help make sure they're swallowing safely after surgery. We're working with trauma services just to make sure that ⁓ people who come in after a traumatic event or concussion are getting like top notch care in that first 24 hours. Certainly being stroke certified and making sure we have the best care in all the country. Not every hospital has that level of care. You know, we started a program where we're working with the intensivist and pulmonologist to make sure all the trach patients have the opportunity to communicate early on and begin to swallow again. I just, I can't express enough how progressive our hospital is and the opportunities that they provide us so that we can in return make sure our patients are getting the very best care. so that's just what I want people to know in this community. Like you do not have to go to the next best thing that you perceive is Dallas or Houston or Chicago, our doctors and our therapists and all of our auxiliary staff, they're just, they have opportunities to get advanced certifications and they train in some of the biggest and best hospitals everywhere. Well, it's world class. I see that across so many, our staff are world class. They have a world class training and not only are they getting more questions, they provide, I can't tell you how many, how many times I hear that we are going to the other hospitals and we are going to national conferences and presenting, here's what we do. And I get those, for the patient experience, I get those calls, I mean, monthly, I get a call from somebody else going, what are you guys doing? How are you doing this? Can you present here? I mean, it's like, people, if you live local and you don't know that, I get it. Right? Even, know, joke, even Jesus in his hometown, they didn't want to hear from him. Right. ⁓ And so, and no, please, I'm not comparing us. I probably shouldn't say that. I'm comparing us to Jesus. Okay. But ⁓ the point is, is sometimes there's a temptation to think, you know, well, if it's local, it must not be that good. And that is just not what I see. Right. I see across our organization, world, world-class special folks, like doing incredible things. I couldn't agree more. Yeah. You know, my family and I, use it. My son's had two shoulder surgeries. My mom, It just, this last six months has had two spine surgeries. My dad passed in the hospital after a lengthy illness and we received top notch care in every situation. Well, I've, I'm been a recipient. I just need to talk to rehab services for a second. I've not had speech pathology. I don't plan on it. If you get me to eat less, that might be my, what I need. But, ⁓ so, but I have had. More than my sheer of ⁓ physical therapy over the years ⁓ several times I've had some pretty rough injuries, but one in particular I already had a surgeon tell me we're probably gonna have to do shoulder surgery on you And I'd kind of made my piece that that was gonna happen, but surgeon said to his credit He goes well Let's just try therapy first and then if it doesn't it will bring you back and that's been five years ago My shoulders. I've not had no trouble. I did nothing six weeks of you know physical therapy and they've been great since so They work some miracles in there. I probably need to go again. Travis put me on that balance machine the other day and it I had the balance of like a 90 year old. I probably need to get back in there. may need a refresh. I've actually got a, fingers crossed, I've got an appointment for an MRI of my knee coming up soon. So think I've got a little something going, tear or something, which is probably why the balance is so bad. So I'm hoping that the surgeon's also gonna say, let's send you to therapy first and we'll see what happens. Y'all can work magic again. Well, I know you'll be in great hands. No doubt, no doubt. Awesome. ⁓ there's never enough time. I have so many more things I wanna talk to you about, but let me have one more question for you is you're 19 years in, getting close to 20. What is something that you have learned? that you wish you knew when you started? Is there anything that sticks out to you like, man, there's this lesson that I would love to tell somebody that's six months in. Right. And I'm going to have the opportunity for this. Actually, Jennifer and Elena and I and Abby and Kendall, we have a new grad starting. Awesome. In June. Do we know names or anything like that We want to know what say. OK, whoever, new grad. Whoever you are. You are so blessed. You are going to get to learn from the best. Like whenever you get here, I hope you see this and know how awesome this is that you're getting trained by this group of ladies. Continue. Thank you. Thank you for compliment. I would just want her to know you're never going to know it all. Like I think I put too much pressure on myself early on. you've got to study more. You got to learn more. I still learn something new every single day. and I'm blessed to have the mentorship of the other speech pathologists because I'm constantly picking their brain or asking them for something. So I would definitely say don't be afraid to ask questions, find yourself a mentor, reach out to them frequently and often, explore new things. If you think there's a service that's not being offered or something that we need to get trained in, ask, let's do it. you know, let's continue to progress the profession because the things that I learned about 31 years ago are not what we're doing now. It changes. It constantly changes. I was doing sign language and printing out communication boards and really doing very little swallowing therapy at all. I think, you know, just being an active participant, you know, in the department, you know, If you see something you wanna do, ask to be a part of it. Those are the main things I can think of right now. I think those are really wise lessons and I just wanna dig in on one of them was ⁓ don't be afraid to ask questions. that, aren't the words you use, but it's the words that came to my mind is all of us is smarter than any one of us. And when you have the ego in check and the humility and the confidence, I know that sounds like contradictory, but to be able to say, don't know everything, I'm not supposed to know everything, I can't know everything. I'm gonna ask lots of questions, I'm not gonna be embarrassed, I'm not gonna be shy to ask questions, I wanna learn everything I can from these incredible people around me and know that we are all smarter together. That's where magic can happen in those kind of situations when you have a team that empowers people to ask questions, you have people that. that have enough humility to do it. It's okay to ask questions. That's exactly what I was gonna say. I think we gained a lot of credibility with the physicians and the advanced practitioners when we just said, this isn't something we've really done before. We wanna learn about it. We wanna get trained in it. Help us, help you. And I think that's been also a large part of how we've grown the program. so yeah, put yourself out there. Be willing to learn, ask the questions. There are so many good collaborations between departments and the hospital. And I mean, I just hope that that continues and grows and we just get better and better. That's right. I think one of my another kind of core belief that I've over the years, I remember when I first started as a nurse at the bedside, I really did kind of think like I'm by myself here. Right. And when I say by myself, I had my other nursing team right there with me, but that was it. I didn't. As I've grown in the organization, I realized I had a whole organization full of resources, you know, that I just didn't, I didn't even know they existed at that time. And so I think there's, I don't have to know everything, but I do need to connect with the people around me that do, right? And so if I can connect and have relationships with all those people around me, we can get anything done when we like all work together on it. Cause we got a lot of really cool, smart, incredible people. We do. ⁓ Thank goodness, because I'm not that smart, but I know a of smart people. are. That's awesome. Well, thank you so much. Anything else you want to share before we wrap up today? No, I think we're good. I think we covered a lot of ground in a short time. We sure did. We could talk for a long time. Well, thank you again. It's such an honor. Thank you for what you do, how you serve all over the organization. I'm proud to get to work with you. Well, thank you for having this podcast. I've learned so much through all of your interactions with people across the organization. Awesome. we'll hopefully keep it going for a long time. Sounds good.