Linda Valentino, DNP, RN, NEA-BC
Linda Valentino, DNP, RN, NEA-BC, has a clear view of her role: to care for the people who are caring for other people—both the staff who are taking care of patients and the nurse leaders who are taking care of the staff.
“The best part of my job is supporting other nurses,” says Dr. Valentino, Interim Chief Nursing Officer (CNO) at The Mount Sinai Hospital. “Nurses are the backbone of every health care system. They’re doing meaningful, compassionate, professional work involved in supporting our patients. We have to recognize and support the patient-centered aspect of their clinical work at every opportunity.”
It is no wonder, then, that as the world began to emerge from the COVID-19 pandemic, the cover of the American Journal of Nursing’s landmark issue, “Year of the Nurse and the Midwife,” featured portraits of Mount Sinai nurses through Dr. Valentino’s efforts. She witnessed as the Health System’s nurses worked tirelessly at the country’s pandemic epicenter, caring for patients under the most unimaginable circumstances. “I felt like there was never going to be enough recognition for the staff and what we were able to accomplish. Nurses stepped up and saved our world.”
“While nurses are fully dedicated to their patients and the patient’s family,” says Dr. Valentino, “it’s critically important to remember that they are whole people who have families, and they have lives, and they have stories, and they have history, and every day they bring their whole selves to the work they do to care for others.
“Our nurses show up for the fragility of human beings, and while the work is rewarding, it’s also very demanding, and we need to be sure they focus on their own well-being in the process.”
During her recent tenure as CNO of Mount Sinai West and Vice President of Nursing and Patient Care Services for Women’s and Children’s Services for the Mount Sinai Health System, Dr. Valentino began to turn to “gratitude” as a gateway to wellness. One effort to foster this connection involved a partnership with filmmaker Louis Schwartzberg, director of “Gratitude Revealed.” In conversations with everyday people, thought leaders, and personalities, his acclaimed movie explores how to live a more meaningful life filled with gratitude as a means of connecting to the world around us and navigating life’s day-to-day challenges. Dr. Valentino held Health System viewings of the film and plans to incorporate a curriculum developed by Mr. Schwartzberg to facilitate future viewings, followed by discussions tailored specifically to nurses and their practice.
Dr. Valentino is also passionate about developing and supporting the nurse leaders who support the work of the front line. “These front-line nurse managers are the interface between the work environment, the staff, and the patient and, ultimately, how we deliver care,” she says. “They have a unique capacity to transform the work and the workplace for our clinical staff.”
To this end, Dr. Valentino and her team embraced human-centered leadership theory for nursing. This takes into account not just the individual but the environment in which the nurse works. The focus is on helping nurse leaders develop and incorporate into their leadership practice the necessary skills for cultivating people, building community, and recognizing the humanity in others. “Leaders who embrace these attributes have the ability to create and sustain cultures of excellence, trust, and caring,” says Dr. Valentino, “which leads to sustained and positive outcomes for our patients and our staff.”
“We want to support leaders to focus first on personal transformation—it starts with you—but then lead in service to others,” she says. “We encourage them to embrace the concept that effective leadership starts with you, but it’s not about you. It’s about the teams you are leading and supporting, and the patients these team members care for. It’s a theory that aligns perfectly with both our Relationship-Centered Care Model, as well as the American Nurses Credentialing Center Magnet tenants.”
Creating Excellence Together
One far-reaching example of this work involves stay interviews, the subject of Dr. Valentino’s recent research. “We trained our nurse leaders to use a structured interview technique at least once a year with their incumbent staff and more frequently for new staff,” she says. The nurse manager talks one on one with a staff nurse to find out what they need to help them do their job and what will make them want to stay at their job. “When staff recognized they were being heard, and that the nature of the questions was about them, they started to get excited. Soon other staff started asking for their stay interviews.” This investment in the leaders and the staff has already had a tremendous impact. Following the first round of interviews, nursing turnover rates dropped by an impressive 30 percent.
“We continue to see clinical nurses and nursing leadership working together to make improvements in the care environment. A lot of transformation has happened using the daily management boards and via quality projects focused on patient experience. Some involve simple things, like changing the experience of moms as they are in the postpartum phase, giving them certain amenities like smoothies and more comfortable robes, providing lactation consultation, and other supports.”
“The obstetrics teams came up with some fantastic projects,” she says. “They looked at every aspect of communication, for example, how the nurses in Labor and Delivery gave reports to the nurses in Postpartum. They met and talked to each other, and then they were no longer just the voice at the end of the phone. The result is a renewed sense of community and teamwork.”
Likewise, Dr. Valentino appreciates the importance of shared governance. “We’re seeing our unit-based councils and our staff play active roles in decisions that impact their practice,” says Dr. Valentino. “They have a say in how we make decisions. This approach is moving in parallel with the leadership and the unit staff as they embark on important work that they’ll be focusing on together.”
Pathway to Leadership
Dr. Valentino’s vision and values developed at an early age. In her words: “It’s a boring story. I just always wanted to be a nurse.” In high school, she volunteered as a candy-striper in her local hospital, where she logged among the highest number of volunteer hours, receiving a commendation from the mayor’s office. “I loved being with the people, the patients, and the nurses,” says Dr. Valentino. “I really want to be with people all the time and care for them in that way. That’s always been the case and still today drives what I do. It brings me joy to know that we serve here with purpose. We do it with professionalism and we do it with compassion and understanding, and I think it’s really as close to the human experience as you can get in a job.”
This approach has served her well throughout her career. A creative problem-solver, Dr. Valentino is often on the vanguard of change, advancing nursing professional practice through innovation and interprofessional collaboration, organizational transformation, quality improvement, and research. Before joining Mount Sinai, Dr. Valentino held leadership roles at Rockefeller University, NewYork-Presbyterian/Columbia University Medical Center, and NYU Langone. In 2017, she became the Chief Nursing Officer and Vice President for Nursing and Patient Care Services at Mount Sinai Brooklyn. From 2019 to 2020, Dr. Valentino served as Vice President of Nursing Operations at The Mount Sinai Hospital, where she led fiscal, operational, and clinical oversight of multiple service lines, including women’s, ambulatory, oncology, and pediatric services. She also played a key leadership role during the initial COVID-19 pandemic surge when New York City emerged as the epicenter of the pandemic in the United States. In 2020, Dr. Valentino was named CNO of Mount Sinai West and Vice President of Nursing and Patient Care Services for Women’s and Children’s Services for the Mount Sinai Health System. In 2023, she returned to The Mount Sinai Hospital as Interim CNO.
Dr. Valentino holds a Doctor of Nursing Practice from the MGH Institute of Health Professions, and a Master of Science in Nursing Administration from Hunter College of The City University of New York. She is board certified as a Nurse Executive, Advanced, and is a member of the American Organization for Nursing Leadership and the American Nurses Association.