Humans of UNAC/UHCP: Kimberley Kudaishi, SLP
“Hawaii is unique for many reasons. My great-grandparents emigrated from Japan to Hawaii. It’s a pretty diverse population here; everyone’s got different backgrounds. Diversity is something that I have to take into consideration with each family that I’m working with.
“A fair number of families speak more than one language within their home, sometimes more than two. I make sure that I’m connecting with the family and being respectful of cultural traditions or cultural norms. We use interpreters on a fairly regular basis just to make sure that parents are fully aware and understanding of what’s happening. We’ve got a wide variety of people with different socioeconomic backgrounds. We have to be aware of the possible challenges to accessing therapy services, or health and medical literacy in general. We try to identify or be aware of those possible concerns so that we can make sure that nobody’s left out or left behind.
“I’m the only dedicated outpatient speech-language pathologist who specializes in pediatrics (on Oahu). We have another full-time outpatient speech-language pathologist (SLP) who specializes in adults and at least three other inpatient and/or home health SLPs. I appreciate being able to tap into the knowledge base of the SLPs with more experience, particularly our inpatient therapist who also sees pediatric patients. Because we are a small group, each therapist has an important contribution to make, and we do our best to look out for and support each other. It was an honor to represent all of them on the bargaining team.
“Just being part of the bargaining team was really illuminating. I was able to learn a little bit more about how it works from the inside. Being part of this unity is something that’s going to be positive for our department.
“We’ve been able to build up a little bit more of a robust outside provider network, where we can make referrals to. But some islands just don’t have tons of speech therapy companies.
“More speech-language pathologists within Kaiser would be nice. There’s just a shortage of services. It’s a field that needs to grow. I’m excited to see that it’s something that parents are becoming more aware of. It definitely feels like parents are coming in with a little bit more knowledge. They have a little bit more understanding of how I can help their child, or help them help their child.
“I hope that we can grow and get more speech-language pathologists, and keep more people intrigued and interested in speech pathology.”
Like this story on social media