A Team Approach at the Mount Sinai Thyroid Center at Union Square

Nov 5, 2018 | Community

A ribbon-cutting held Monday, October 15, celebrated the new Mount Sinai Thyroid Center at Union Square. Today, the Center offers patients a unified team approach to treatment of all thyroid conditions—all in one convenient location—allowing endocrinologists and surgeons to collaborate with colleagues in pathology, nuclear medicine, oncology, and other specialties.

Attendees included, from left : Terry Davies, MD, Co-Director of the Thyroid Center; Mark Urken, MD, Director, Head and Neck Surgical Oncology, Mount Sinai Beth Israel; Maria Del Pilar Brito, MD, Director of the Thyroid Center; Dennis S. Charney, MD, Anne and Joel Ehrenkranz Dean, Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai, and President for Academic Affairs, Mount Sinai Health System; William Inabnet III, MD, Chair of Surgery, Mount Sinai Beth Israel; and Matthew Weissman, MD, MBA, Chair of Medicine, Mount Sinai Beth Israel. Not pictured: Barbara Murphy, MD, Chair of the Samuel Bronfman Department of Medicine.

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Nurses Salute Physicians Who Excel as Partners in Care

Nov 5, 2018 | Community, Featured

From left: Laura Stark, DNP, RN; Frances Cartwright, PhD, RN-BC; Tao Xu, MD; Gregory Serrao, MD; and Judah Sueker, MD.

Before an enthusiastic audience of faculty and staff, and family and friends, 13 physicians at The Mount Sinai Hospital were honored by nurse colleagues and Nursing leadership with the 31st Annual Physician of the Year Award. The ceremony, held Tuesday, September 25, at Stern Auditorium, is a yearly salute to physicians who excel in patient care and foster strong collaborative partnerships with nurses.

“All of the award winners are partners in care and have earned the respect and appreciation of the Mount Sinai community of nurses,” said Frances Cartwright, PhD, RN-BC, Edgar M. Cullman, Sr. Chair of the Department of Nursing, and Chief Nursing Officer and Senior Vice President for Patient Care Services, The Mount Sinai Hospital.

Nurses showed their appreciation of the award winners with speeches, videos, and PowerPoint presentations, set to pop music and filled with accolades like these: excellent communicator, team player, compassionate, hands-on, forward-thinking, engaged, approachable, and thorough in patient care. Gregory Serrao, MD, who won the Fellow Award, thanked the nurses he works with at Mount Sinai Heart, saying, “They have become friends, they have become mentors, and they are living examples of what it means to always put patients first.

David L. Reich, MD, President and Chief Operating Officer, The Mount Sinai Hospital, said: “Every physician who was nominated by Mount Sinai nurses should feel a tremendous sense of pride for cultivating patient-care teams that promote clinical excellence.”

The 2018 honorees were:

House Officer Award

Judah Sueker, MD, Chief Resident, Department of Emergency Medicine

Fellow Award

Gregory Serrao, MD, Mount Sinai Heart

Attending Award

Tao Xu, MD, Assistant Professor of Medicine (Hospital Medicine)

Special Recognition Award

TeamSTEPPS Stroke Team, Department of Neurology: Benjamin Brush, MD; Bradley Delman, MD; Gregory Fernandez, MD; Andy Jagoda, MD; Cappi Lay, MD; Peter Shearer, MD; Hazem Shoirah, MD; Paul Singh, MD, MPH; Laura Stein, MD; Judah Sueker, MD; Stanley Tuhrim, MD.

From left: Tara Roche, RN; Laura Stark, DNP, RN; Hazem Shoirah; MD; Danielle Wheelwright, RN; Cappi Lay, MD; Frances Cartwright, PhD, RN-BC; Laura Stein, MD; Stanley Tuhrim, MD; Bradley Delman, MD; Judah Sueker, MD; and Paul Singh, MD.

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Albert Siu, MD, MSPH, Elected to the National Academy of Medicine

Nov 5, 2018 | Community, Featured

Albert Siu, MD, MSPH

Albert Siu, MD, MSPH, chair emeritus of the Brookdale Department of Geriatrics and Palliative Medicine at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai, has been elected to the National Academy of Medicine. This is considered one of the highest honors in health and medicine, and recognizes individuals who have demonstrated outstanding professional achievement and commitment to service.

“Dr. Siu is an exceptional leader in health policy research and medicine,” says Dennis S. Charney, MD, Anne and Joel Ehrenkranz Dean, Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai, and President for Academic Affairs, Mount Sinai Health System. “His knowledge of aging and health care policy will be a tremendous asset to the National Academy of Medicine.”

After serving as the chair from 2003 to 2017 of the Brookdale Department of Geriatrics and Palliative Medicine, the nation’s first—and now largest—medical school department of geriatrics, Dr. Siu has dedicated himself full time to building and leading the nation’s most ambitious Hospital at Home program. Under Dr. Siu’s leadership, and with the support of an award from the Center for Medicare & Medicaid Innovation, the program has provided acute hospital-level care for nearly 800 patients who otherwise would have been treated in the hospital.

“The Hospital at Home program has made a huge improvement in patients’ lives,” says Dr. Charney. “Its clinical outcomes show measurable reductions in patient readmissions, emergency department visits, and transfers to skilled nursing facilities.”

The Academy provides independent, objective analysis and advice on health issues, and its members are elected through a selective process. With the election of Dr. Siu, Mount Sinai has 21 current faculty members in the Academy.

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National Cancer Institute Leader Visits Mount Sinai

Nov 5, 2018 | Cancer, Community, Featured, Research

From left: Luis M. Isola, MD, Professor of Medicine (Hematology and Medical Oncology), and Pediatrics; Ramon Parsons, MD, PhD, Director, The Tisch Cancer Institute; Norman E. Sharpless, MD, Director, National Cancer Institute; and William Oh, MD, Deputy Director, The Tisch Cancer Institute, and Associate Director of Clinical & Translational Research for the Institute.

Aging is one of the greatest risk factors for developing cancer, which is most frequently diagnosed among people aged 65-74. But there are no simple explanations for the “multifaceted” science behind this connection, according to Norman E. Sharpless, MD, Director of the National Cancer Institute (NCI).

On Thursday, September 13, Dr. Sharpless addressed the topic in a seminar titled “The Dynamic Interplay between Cancer and Aging,” which he presented before a standing-room-only crowd in Davis Auditorium on The Mount Sinai Hospital campus. Dr. Sharpless has devoted much of his career to studying the connection between cancer and aging. Developing a better understanding of this relationship is particularly important, he said, because people over the age of 65 make up the fastest growing segment of the nation’s population.

Dr. Sharpless was invited to speak about his own research by The Tisch Cancer Institute at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai, where he spent the earlier part of the day meeting with leaders of the Institute and medical school. He had lunch with postdoctoral fellows and students who work in Mount Sinai’s cancer-focused laboratories, and met with faculty and staff who oversee Mount Sinai’s Cancer Center Support Grant. The grant provides Mount Sinai with its NCI designation as one of an elite group of U.S. institutions committed to the research and treatment of cancer.

During the day’s meetings, Dr. Sharpless shared his vision for NCI programs and discussed trends in funding and cancer research. The Tisch Cancer Institute received its NCI designation for the fi rst time in 2015 and is preparing to renew the competitive grant in 2019. Since his appointment to the NCI in 2017, Dr. Sharpless has spent time visiting NCI-designated cancer centers around the country. On his recent trip to New York City, he also visited the Albert Einstein Cancer Center.

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A Campaign to “Scrub Out Cancer”

Oct 23, 2018 | Community

Benjamin Salter, DO, right, and Lucy Duffy, RN, second from right, with some of the organizing team members of the “Scrub Out Cancer” campaign.

Perioperative staff throughout The Mount Sinai Hospital can be seen dressed in pink—from head to toe—in the Operating Room (OR) during October as part of a new effort known as “Scrub Out Cancer.”

“We are wearing pink OR warm-up jackets, bouffant caps, surgical masks, exam gloves—and even socks,” says Benjamin Salter, DO, Assistant Professor of Anesthesiology, Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai, who created the campaign with Lucy Duffy, RN, Vice President of Perioperative Services.

“Our fundamental goal is to raise awareness and speak to our staff and those in other departments about the benefits of cancer screening and living a healthy lifestyle.” The “Scrub Out Cancer” team is also distributing cancer-screening information and giveaways to their perioperative colleagues.

Observing International Overdose Awareness Day

Oct 23, 2018 | Community

Anita Kennedy, left, Outreach Coordinator, Opioid Treatment Program at Mount Sinai Beth Israel, with Erin Clyne, an attendee of the remembrance event.

Through poetry, music, and spoken-word performances, participants told stories of drug addiction and loss on International Overdose Awareness Day, Friday, August 31, in Davis Auditorium.

The event, called a remembrance, was open to the public and sponsored by the Respectful & Equitable Access to Comprehensive Healthcare (REACH) program in the Division of General Internal Medicine, Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai, and the Mount Sinai Center for Spirituality and Health.

Attendees lit candles and wrote notes in honor of lost family and friends, and experts provided information on harm reduction, including lessons in administering the overdose-reversal drug naloxone. Members of the Center for Spirituality and Health distributed aromatherapy and herbal teas from the mobile wellness Chi Cart™.

“The lives of those lost to drug overdose are no less worthy than any other lives, and their loss is no less dignified and deserving of remembrance and honor,” said Jeffrey Weiss, PhD, Director of the REACH program. “We can acknowledge the loss of those to drug overdose, free of any stigma, shame, or concealment.”

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