It’s clear that the holidays are here at MSBI. Our units and locations are fully decked with cheer. Thank you for taking the time to bring joy to your patients and each other. It’s so important to lift our patients up during this time of year.
I hope you all are enjoying the holidays so far and find some time to spend with loved ones over the next few days.
This week I have a small, but very important ask of you.
You’ve been doing an incredible job of taking care of our patients, and I am eternally grateful. We want to continue on this path of improving the patient experience, and the entire system is beginning to dive deep into this work. To start this process, we need you to fill out a survey that will help us learn where to focus and how we can support you better.
It’s so important to me that we hear from every single one of you—IT, EHS, patient care services, risk management, EVS, voluntary physicians, and everyone else. Even if you don’t come into direct contact with patients, our patients are affected by your work. The survey is open until December 22.
Thanks to those who attended our survey kickoff event!
You may have seen some of the faces below at our entrances in the past week to help us enforce badging and flu vaccination requirements. Please stop and say hello and thank you.
Our security team members, infection prevention colleagues, and many others are working so hard and keeping the flu risk away from us and our patients is so important. I’m thankful for their dedication.
I’m also grateful to each of you who has been kind to them as they ask you to show your ID and about your flu vaccination status. This can be a thankless task and, fortunately, many of you recognize their efforts and treat them with kindness. I cannot thank you enough.
Stuy Town team members from left to right: Randie Graves, medical assistant; Loriza Almodovar, medical assistant; Yvonne Sand, radiologic technician; Elizabeth Choi, MD; Ann Kokinda, practice manager; Freddy Verzosa, MD.
This Monday, we opened our brand new Stuyvesant Town practice at 518 East 20th Street. This practice will be a great addition to our ambulatory network. The practice began seeing patients on Tuesday and many neighbors have already stopped in to say hello, welcome them to the community, and make appointments.
We are excited to welcome several new members to our Downtown family at this practice. Dr. Elizabeth Choi and Dr. Freddy Verzosa will be our primary care physicians focusing on preventative care and family medicine. Dr. Johnny Arnouk will provide orthopedic services and we look forward to eventually growing the practice to include podiatry and dermatology. Check out the team in their beautiful new space.
It’s so wonderful to have new members on our team, and it’s also wonderful to welcome some of our family back into the MSBI world.
This fall, we were thrilled to welcome back Jacob Otabor, one of our nurses in the ED. He started at BI as an X-ray tech in 2005 and became an ED nurse in June 2010. He found his way back to MSBI in September. When asked why he came back, he said:
“MSBI is a home. When I came back here, I was glad to be back to sanity and to a place where I am recognized as a human being. There is a loving and caring you get here that you can’t get at other places.”
Welcome back, Jacob. We are so happy you’ve come home.
I have so much to be thankful for this year, but most of all I am thankful for you. Yesterday, many of our MSBI family were in the hospital caring for our patients who couldn’t be home for the holiday. It means so much to me that you took time away from your own families to care for our patients.
Microbiology Lab team members
10 Dazian nurses
Attending physicians on Dazian
More patient care team members on 10 Dazian
Lab team members
Many of you joined us at our Thanksgiving Lunch in the Dazian Rotunda. Smiles and spirits were bright. Thanks to our food service crew and volunteer servers who made it happen.
I recently had the chance to sit down with Minimol Shebeen, RN, who is our Assistant Director of Perioperative Services and a 2017-2018 Heart Award recipient. She is admired by her staff and so many others around the hospital, and you’ll see why in this video.
Click to watch the video
Mini brought up how hard her staff works and that this week is Perioperative Nurses’ week. I’m so grateful to our entire Perioperative team for their flexibility, dedication, and service to our patients in a challenging environment. They put in long hours and treat complex patients with grace and dedication.
Some members of our Perioperative team, from left to right: Arthur Lipata, Marie Noelle, Christal Cayard, Dwayne Wilson, Camilla Bell, Ancell Cabrera, Ma Conception Rugas, Reid Trevor, Yuberky Delgado, Dawn Pickering.
Perioperative team members from left to right: Imelda Harjano, RN; Antionette Smith, USA; Irma Mondon, Surgical Technologist; Tiffany Chuang, RN, Cindy Girdusky,RN; Barbara Hernandez, RN; Maricon Rugas , RN.