Updated on Jun 30, 2022 | Community, Featured, Patient Stories, Pediatrics
Aiden Schaefer, far right, and his brother, Mason, snuggle with Professor Bunsen Honeydew, Kravis Children’s Hospital’s new full-time employee.
Two-year-old Aiden Schaefer was battling leukemia, with long hospital stays, uncomfortable medical procedures, and time spent away from his twin brother, Mason, when a gentle young service dog, Professor Bunsen Honeydew, began keeping him company as part of a new program at Kravis Children’s Hospital at Mount Sinai. Denise Schaefer says her son Aiden “fell in love instantly” with the friendly golden doodle. Aiden’s experience “was not about the medicine or the doctors, it was about seeing Professor.”
Thanks to an innovative program, Paws & Play, supported by PetSmart Charities® at Kravis Children’s Hospital, the highly trained facility dog is now a full-time employee at Mount Sinai. Kravis launched the program—the first of its kind in New York State—with a grant from PetSmart Charities. Under the direction of handlers Ali Spike, MS, Certified Child Life Specialist, Toshiko Nonaka, MS, Certified Child Life Specialist, and Morgan Stojanowski,
Follow Professor Bunsen Honeydew’s adventures on Instagram.
Child Life Program Assistant Director, Professor works with patients in the Blau Center for Children’s Cancer and Blood Disease, the Alice Gottesman Bayer Pediatric Intensive Care Unit, and inpatient units.
Working in conjunction with the doctors and nurses who care for the physical well-being of patients, Professor provides emotional support. He helps to ease the pain or anxiety that accompanies medical procedures, and long hospitalizations and treatments, while improving the socialization, motivation, and overall temperament of pediatric patients.
“At Kravis, we are surrounded by excellence, great love, and care for families,” says Diane C. Rode, MPS, Child Life Program Director. “This is a magnificent opportunity for us to continue humanizing the health care we provide.”
Updated on Jun 30, 2022 | Community
From left: Amanda Burden, Training and Outreach Supervisor, SAVI, volunteer Latoya Bennett, and Silva Sergenian, MA, Sexual Assault Forensic Examiner Program and Volunteer Coordinator.
At an informational table in Guggenheim Pavilion, Mount Sinai’s Sexual Assault and Violence Intervention Program (SAVI) in April educated visitors about the community outreach and educational programming it provides. For more than 30 years, SAVI has offered free, confidential therapy and advocacy to survivors of sexual assault and intimate partner violence (IPV). Recent funding from the New York State Department of Health has expanded SAVI’s capacity to offer free workshops at community centers, schools, higher educational institutions, corporations, and organizations to increase awareness and strengthen best practices concerning prevention of sexual assault and IPV. SAVI has more than 150 active volunteers on call 24 hours a day, seven days a week, who support survivors’ medical and police reporting options in the emergency room. The gender-inclusive volunteer program is currently recruiting through the end of September. Those interested should email savi@mssm.edu.
Updated on Jun 30, 2022 | Community, Featured
From left: Brian Meade, PE, Senior Project Manager, Planning Design and Construction; Leah Borenstein, RN, MPA, Director, Perioperative Services; and Evan L. Flatow, MD.
As the Mount Sinai Health System evolves to meet New Yorkers’ changing health care needs, Mount Sinai West is completing Phase One of a three-year plan that will vastly expand its surgical capabilities. The initiative, which began in November 2016, will enable an increase in the types and number of complex elective surgical procedures performed at the hospital, especially in the areas of Orthopedics, Neurosurgery, and Head and Neck Cancer.
The project is a key part of the transformation currently under way at the seven hospital campuses across the Health System—all efforts aimed at strengthening Mount Sinai’s ability to better serve patients.
“A large portion of Orthopedics, including hand, shoulder, and elbow surgery, along with some joint replacement and spine surgery, have already moved here from other Health System hospitals, laying the groundwork for making Mount Sinai West a center of excellence for Orthopedics,” says Evan L. Flatow, MD, President, Mount Sinai West. “Next year, we will be adding Head and Neck Cancer, as well as a movement disorders neurosurgical program, which will join the epilepsy and neuroendovascular programs here to make a Neuroscience center of excellence.”
Phase One includes a new 600-square-foot operating room and the expansion of another, the addition of three new post-anesthesia care (PACU) beds, and a completely renovated surgical reception and family waiting area, all scheduled to open in early August. The project also includes the renovation of the West 59th Street hospital entrance and lobby, and upgraded elevators to the surgical reception area.
The new reception area will streamline the surgical check-in process. It includes a bright and spacious waiting area with twice the seating capacity of the previous space, two laptop stations, two big-screen televisions, a quiet area, and two restrooms. Comfortable new seats come with individual electrical outlets for convenient phone charging. Nearby, a new consultation room enables surgeons to meet privately with a patient’s family.
“Our focus is to improve the overall patient experience,” says Leah Borenstein, RN, MPA, Director, Perioperative Services, Mount Sinai West and Mount Sinai St. Luke’s. “This really is a show stopper,” she says of the new reception and family waiting area. According to Brian Meade, PE, Senior Project Manager, Planning, Design and Construction, Mount Sinai Health System, Phase Two is scheduled for completion next March, and will include additional operating rooms, a new 3.0 T MRI, and new staff lounges.
Phase Three will add 18 private prep and recovery rooms, and is expected to be ready in October 2018. Phase Four, scheduled for completion in June 2019, will include the addition of four operating rooms and the activation of the new MRI as an intraoperative MRI, which will enable precision neurosurgical imaging in real time during surgery.
Mr. Meade says their goal is to complete the renovation for December 2019, ultimately adding six operating rooms—bringing the total to 22—and doubling the number of PACU beds to 32. Surgical support facilities for staff, upgrades to engineering systems, and an enhanced and expanded endoscopy suite are also part of the overall plan.
“Starting with convenient valet parking and the reception and family waiting area, we are designing our expansion in a patient-centered way,” says Dr. Flatow, “trying to improve the experience for patients and families going through what can be a stressful time.”
Updated on Jun 30, 2022 | Community, Featured
Emily Rubin, left, co-editor of a new anthology of work from Mount Sinai’s Writing Workshops, with Alison Snow, PhD. Click the image to watch a video about the writing program
There was a standing-room-only crowd at the recent launching of a new book, The Write Treatment Anthology, at Mount Sinai Downtown-Union Square. But it was not just any literary crowd. These were cancer patients and survivors, along with family members, friends, and Mount Sinai Health System staff. After gentle prompting, some of those who were sitting gave up their chairs for those not feeling well enough to stand for very long.
“A sold-out crowd for a literary event,” marveled Emily Rubin, who leads Mount Sinai’s two Writing Workshops, and who was a co-editor of the anthology. The book, published on Amazon.com through grants and crowdfunding, includes essays, short stories, and poems that 23 cancer patients, survivors, and caregivers have written since the workshops formed in 2011. Seventeen excerpts from the book were read at the event held on Thursday, June 15.
“We are so excited about this accomplishment—a published book, filled with the stories of our cancer patients,” said Alison Snow, PhD, LCSW-R, and Assistant Director, Cancer Supportive Services at Mount Sinai Downtown Cancer Centers.
The workshops are held on Mondays at Mount Sinai West and on Wednesdays at Mount Sinai Downtown-Chelsea Center and follow a well-worn, comforting routine: Ms. Rubin brings prompts to spur the imagination, like quotes, cards, or photographs, then participants write for about a half-hour, aiming to create a short finished product.
Connie Perry: ‘‘We writers gather close around the table, buoyed along by our continuing bravery. Not because we have each had our cancer battles, but because we bravely face blank pages again and again.’’
“It’s all inspiration for us to write together,” Ms. Rubin said at the event. “And as we write, the room fills with sighs and groans and laughter, tears, and silences heavy with thought. We think and we write, we imagine and we create, and then we read what we’ve written. The stories and poems bring beauty and light to these dark places where we end up going.”
Since the workshops began, about 300 people have taken part. One group was started by Ms. Rubin after she completed treatments for breast cancer at Mount Sinai Beth Israel, and the other was formed by Susan Ribner, an author who was treated for ovarian cancer at Mount Sinai West. The two started the groups at about the same time entirely by chance, and in an only-in-New-York coincidence, they found that they had met years before—at an aikido dojo in Chelsea. They collaborated on workshops and book readings, and after Ms. Ribner went into hospice care, she asked Ms. Rubin to take over both groups. Ms. Ribner died in 2014, and her spirit was a vibrant presence at the book launch.
One of the book’s authors, former patient Isaac Read, shared his essay “Sue Ribner” at the event: “She was a gracious, very strong woman. Weeks before she died, I called her because I had not heard from the writing class in a while. She told me that she was not teaching the class anymore, but she did not tell me how bad she was. I shared with her a quote about writing that I heard on a TV show. The quote is, ‘Writing is an act of faith, not an act of grammar.’ ”
Sales of the anthology will help fund the Writing Workshops. Copies can be purchased on Amazon.com at http://a.co/babnF9D or at emilyrubin.net.
Jack Robert Nix: ‘‘I am a soldier. I even get tattooed. it is for the bullets. electron. high beam. but I dislike the uniform. a hospital gown.’’
Jacqueline Johnson: ‘‘Whatever it was he was reaching for, he had the appearance of a warrior ready for anything, ready for the future.’’
Updated on Jun 30, 2022 | Community
James C. Tsai, MD, MBA, President, New York Eye and Ear Infirmary of Mount Sinai; and Jodi S. Sassoon, MD, Director of Anatomic Pathology and Clinical Pathology, served lunch to operating room technician Pedro Vasquez.
Food, fun, and appreciation were on the menu Wednesday, June 14, at the New York Eye and Ear Infirmary of Mount Sinai as senior management—wearing chef’s hats and festive fake moustaches—served lunch in the facility’s cafeteria to 300 employees to thank them for their dedication throughout the year. Participants were treated to summer barbecue favorites, such as hamburgers, watermelon, and lemonade, and invited to enter a raffle to win gift baskets. “We truly value the contributions and hard work demonstrated by all of our employees,” Christopher T. Spina, MS, Senior Vice President and Chief Operating Officer of the New York Eye and Ear Infirmary, said. “And this event gives us an opportunity to show our appreciation for what they do every single day.”
Updated on Jun 30, 2022 | Community
The Department of Neurosurgery’s softball players, led by Joshua B. Bederson, MD, Professor and Chair of Neurosurgery for the Mount Sinai Health System, far right, gathered in Central Park for the charity tournament.
Faculty, fellows, and residents from the Mount Sinai Health System’s Department of Neurosurgery recently participated in the 14th Annual Neurosurgery Charity Softball Tournament. The event, held Saturday, June 3, in Central Park, helps support the Neurosurgery Research and Education Foundation of the American Association of Neurological Surgeons and pediatric brain tumor research. More than 40 teams from academic medical centers in the United States and Canada turned out for the friendly competition. For those keeping score, the Mount Sinai team beat the Michigan Health System and the Penn State Milton S. Hershey Medical Center, but lost to Columbia University Medical Center. Most Valuable Player awards went to Mount Sinai team members Robert J. Rothrock, MD, and Jeffrey Gilligan, MD, both neurosurgery residents; and Peter Taub, MD, Professor of Surgery, Pediatrics, and Neurosurgery, who hit home runs. The event was hosted by Columbia University’s Department of Neurological Surgery.
