How Kaitlyn Shrum ’08 ’11MA Built Her Dream Career the Second Time Around
Kaitlyn Shrum, owner and founder of Southern Speech and Myo in Neptune Beach, holds a Certificate of Clinical Competence from the American Speech-Language and Hearing Association. In addition to many other hours of clinical training, Shrum is also a Certified Myofunctional Therapist and is a Qualified Orofacial Myologist.
Like a lot of Knights, Kaitlyn Shrum was initially drawn to UCF because of Central Florida’s great weather.
Shrum grew up in New England, where she inexplicably became a surfer. Her family had a beach house in New Hampshire, and there is a huge surf community in the area.
“People surf year-round up there, and even though wet suits help, I got really tired of being cold and wanted to surf a lot more.”
One of Shrum’s cousins, Kristin Najarian ’06, was a student at UCF and Shrum visited her while she was considering other Florida colleges.
“I just really loved UCF, and I was on the surf team for a few years,” Shrum says. She also pledged Kappa Delta on her way to earning her bachelor’s degree in finance from the UCF College of Business.
After graduation, Shrum began working in finance within the commercial real estate industry, but then, the market crashed, and U.S. housing prices declined by over 20 percent from their mid-2006 peak. Shrum had already been dissatisfied with her career choice, and the plunging market didn’t make things any easier.
“I was miserable,” Shrum says. “I realized that all my friends who were speech pathologists really enjoyed what they were doing.”
“I was drawn to communication sciences and disorders because I liked the idea of helping people,” Shrum says. “I have a family member who is on the spectrum, and I was very passionate about autism.”
As an out-of-field candidate, she took the pre-requisites for the master’s program that she was missing and was accepted.
It was difficult, Shrum says, but she was motivated by the coursework, because she knew she was on the right path.
As she became further involved in her studies, Shrum realized that being a speech-language pathologist is more than helping people say the sounds that they can’t make.
“Even now,” Shrum says, “I go above and beyond the continuing education requirements that are required in our profession. I’ve also become a continuing education provider for other SLPs. It’s just such a big part of my life, and I love that I can always pivot to some other modality of therapy and start working in that area.”
Early in her career, Shrum says that she had planned on working in the school system because she would get her summers off, and she would get to work with children.
Once she began working with children at UCF in the Communication Disorders Clinic, and during her externships, she gained experience evaluating and treating pediatric patients to improve their ability to eat safely and enjoyably. That particular part of her clinical training sparked an interest and inspired her to receive more training in that area.
“When a baby gets out of the NICU,” Shrum says, “Or if they had trouble breastfeeding or bottle-feeding, that’s when I would start working with them.”
Expanding Her Scope of Practice
Sometimes, premature babies have oral motor deficits or weaknesses and just need a little help trying to build those reflexes and coordination. That specialty is known as oral motor therapy, and it’s similar to an area called myofunctional therapy that Shrum deploys for her patients ages 4 and up. In the latter therapy, Shrum focuses on correct oral rest posture, nasal breathing, and the correct swallow pattern.
She became interested in adding the certification to her scope of practice in 2016, when she realized that her patients could benefit from the therapy.
“It was fascinating,” Shrum says. “From examining the skulls of ancient humans, we could see that they have much broader, wider jaws than we do today. The air they breathed was cleaner, and they likely weren’t breathing through their mouths as much. But because we are eating softer foods, and people aren’t breastfeeding as much, our airways are getting narrower, leading to more trouble breathing. And when we can’t breathe through our nose, our tongues drop down and we start breathing through our mouths.”
This is when problems can occur, Shrum says. The airway, she says, is at the foundation of everything in the myofunctional world.
Shrum is also a certified teacher in the Buteyko Breathing Method, a highly structured breathing technique that involves breathing deeply through the nose to improve health.
“I use the Buteyko method with a lot of my sleep apnea clients, if not all of them,” Shrum says.
With obstructive sleep apnea, the patient’s tongue falls back into the pharynx or the throat, making it harder to breathe,” Shrum says. She works on helping the patient regulate their breathing using correct “oral rest posture,” as well as helping them clear their nasal passages.
Building Her Clinical Practice
Shrum says her finance degree was unexpectedly helpful for her as she began considering opening her own practice.
She worked in a hospital outpatient facility, a behavioral facility that focused primarily on patients on the spectrum, and several outpatient clinics before starting her own practice in 2020.
Since then, her practice has grown, and she has added several clinicians in the last few years. The scope of their practices is articulation, feeding and oral motor, and myofunctional disorder.
“Being in private practice gives us more time to dedicate to our patients and offer them more of a boutique experience than if they were to go to a big clinic or hospital setting.”
Shrum is also a continuing education provider through Northern Speech Services, where she instructs her online students on an introductory course about breathing and breath work.
Last year, Shrum and another colleague co-authored an article on the SLP’s role in pediatric sleep-disordered breathing that was published in a dental sleep magazine and through the American Speech-Language Hearing Association, the national professional, scientific and credentialing organization for its 234,000 members.
Shrum also published a children’s book, Frankie Goes to Camp, about a young French bulldog who just can’t seem to breathe through his nose.
In her first book, Kaitlyn Shrum writes about a young French bulldog who has trouble breathing through his nose.
“It’s been a hit with the kids so far,” Shrum says. “My hope for it was just to be something I could use in therapy and that other therapists could use the therapy. And it seems people have been responding positively to the book and its message.”
Shrum says it’s fun to look back on her career and how it all began at UCF.
“If at first you don’t succeed, go back to UCF and get a different degree,” Shrum laughs. I have wonderful memories from UCF – I met my husband, Kailon ’06 ’12MA, there, and my best friends in the world.”
Kaitlyn met her husband, Kailon, at UCF.
“My elevator speech for what I do in speech therapy, because it’s not a typical practice, is that it’s like physical therapy for the face, the mouth and the nose,” Shrum says. “And I love talking about what I do, so if there are any Knights out there who aspire to become an SLP, I’d love to chat with you.” Email Kaitlyn at kaitlynkshrum@gmail.com
