DENNIS ODA / DODA@STARBULLETIN.COM Millie Ng is on a mission to let people know about the medical services offered by the Rehabilitation Hospital of the Pacific in Nuuanu, where she has worked for more than 20 years. Behind her is artwork that patients at the hospital created.

Making a living
at marketing

Answer: I've been here over 20 years.

Who: Millie Ng Title: Director of marketing, Rehabilitation Hospital of the Pacific Job: Promote the medical services of the hospital to the community When Millie Ng was going through college in the 1970s, she thought she would enjoy going into mass communications, such as radio or television. Instead, she obtained a master's degree in communicative disorders from the University of Wisconsin in Madison, which qualified her to be a speech pathologist -- her first job at the 100-bed Rehabilitation Hospital of the Pacific in Nuuanu. She eventually became the hospital's director of marketing , which ironically is a mass communications job if there ever was one. Ng, 52, also is a graduate of Sacred Hearts Academy and the University of Hawaii. She is married to Aaron Dengler, with whom she has two sons, ages 20 and 19, and lives in Ala Moana.

Q: Have you always been marketing director?

A: No. First I was a speech pathologist. I worked on the hospital floors with the patients. Then I managed the inpatient programs for a while, and then I was director of the outpatient clinics. Now I'm director of marketing.

Q: How many outpatient clinics are there?

A: We have eight outpatient clinics now, located on Oahu, Maui and the Big Island.

Q: What is your main responsibility?

A: Educating the community as well as the physicians that we are a resource center for them, that we can help their patients and improve their lives and get them back into the community.

Q: Is there an average age of the patients?

A: Actually, it's sort of misleading to say there's an average age, because we've had kids as young as 3 to people over age 90.

Q: How big is the hospital staff?

A: For our total hospital and outpatient clinics, we have about 450 employees. I believe we have the largest pool of physical and occupational therapists in the islands.

Q: Do you personally have a staff?

A: I work with all of the staff at the different clinics as well as the hospital. We work in a collaborative process.

Q: Is there a lot of paperwork in your job?

A: Yeah, there always is.

Q: What kind of paperwork?

A: We're doing a lot of flyers, newsletters, advertisements. We're just trying to work with all the physician groups, the hospitals, to make it easy for them to refer patients to us. It's a constant challenge because there are so many regulations they have to deal with.

Q: What's your work schedule?

A: It's variable, mostly Monday through Friday, but also on weekends, depending on whether we need to be out there in the community.

I think our biggest challenge is getting folks to realize that they don't need a severe injury to use our services. Usually patients with severe injuries go to one of the major hospitals first, and once the physicians feel they are physically stable, and need physical or cognitive restorative therapy, then they come here.

But other folks maybe are just weekend warriors and they get a minor back injury or sports injury or something. They can come in and we help them get back to work.