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At Mount Sinai Brooklyn, the COVID-19 Vaccine ‘Pod People’ Treat Everyone Like Family

Updated on Jun 30, 2022 | Featured, Stories of Excellence

Barbra Naccash, left, received her vaccine from Kristine Ortiz, RN, who had cared for Barbra’s mother a year ago when the mother entered Mount Sinai Brooklyn with COVID-19. “Although I could not save her mother’s life, by giving Barbra the COVID-19 vaccine, perhaps I saved hers,” Kristine says.

Kristine Ortiz, RN, a Mount Sinai Health System nurse for 11 years, has been at Mount Sinai Brooklyn for three years, and calls it a “hometown hospital.” This is largely because of the camaraderie of the staff and the diversity of the patients. “You hear Chinese, Creole, and Hebrew among other languages,” Kristine says. “I have my ‘bubbes’ who, like all of my patients, I consider family and treat as such.”

Since January, Kristine has overseen the three MSB vaccine pods. Partnering with Philip Repaci, RN and assistant nurse manager Valerie Hechanova, RN, they call themselves the “pod people,” a name coined by Philip. Working the pods has brought them close. “The emotions run high in the pods,” Kristine says. “We laugh and cry with each other and the people coming in for vaccinations, but they are tears of joy, of course.”

Those receiving vaccinations are treated like family, as well. “We have people coming in for vaccines as old as 102 and have to be mindful of their frailty and mental capacity,“ Kristine explains. Patients are grateful for their care; many days Kristine and her team are awash in Dunkin Donuts and coffee. But, she says, so many staff offer to volunteer—the clergy, nurses from the OR, physicians—that there are many colleagues with whom to share these tokens of appreciation.

One such appreciative patient is Barbra Naccash. In March 2020, Barbra’s mother fell in her apartment in an assisted living community. When she was transferred to Mount Sinai Brooklyn, it was noted she had symptoms of COVID-19. Barbra called every day, and Kristine would get on the phone and update her on her mother’s condition. Kristine also helped Barbra and her mother do FaceTime visits. “I looked at her like a surrogate daughter to my mother,” Barbra says. “She was an angel. Combing my mother’s hair and holding her hand when I could not do those things for her.”

Sadly, Barbra’s mother passed away from complications of the virus. Kristine and Barbra kept in touch by phone, learning about each other’s families and getting to know one another. During one call in February 2021, Kristine inquired about Barbra’s vaccination status. When Barbra and her husband were eligible for COVID-19 vaccine, Kristine helped with scheduling and eventually gave them the shots herself. Barbra and Kristine had never met, so they arranged to meet outside of the hospital that day. The tears flowed during a social distanced “hug.”

“This was a full-circle family experience,” Kristine says. “Although I could not save her mother’s life, by giving Barbra the COVID-19 vaccine, perhaps I saved hers.”

Mount Sinai Brooklyn vaccine pod team members, from left: Kadesia Henry, Desshanai Gumbs, Jacqueline Thomas, Dominique Bostic, and Madelyn Gonzalez.

Students Present Their Latest Studies at Medical Student Research Day

Mar 30, 2021 | Featured, Research

One hundred six poster presentations and four oral presentations capped off new research that was conducted by students at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai and featured at Mount Sinai’s Fourth Annual Karen Zier, PhD, Medical Student Research Day, held over Zoom in March.

Participating in Research Day fulfills one of the medical school’s graduation requirements. Eighty percent of the presenters each year are in their second year of medical school.

“Medical Student Research Day is a showcase and an opportunity for students to share the research and scholarship they have done with their mentors with the Mount Sinai community,” says Mary Rojas, PhD, Director of Icahn Mount Sinai’s Medical Student Research Office, and Associate Professor of Medical Education. “It is an early snapshot of the students’ accomplishments.”

Dr. Rojas says that by the time they graduate, more than half of Mount Sinai’s students will have published in peer-reviewed journals. The Class of 2021 has already published more than 400 peer-reviewed articles.

The event exemplifies Mount Sinai’s commitment to fostering biomedical research and introduces students to the intellectual rigors, skills, and collaboration that lead to incremental findings and life-changing discoveries.

Under the mentorship of Tanvir Choudhri, MD, Associate Professor of Neurosurgery, at Icahn Mount Sinai, second-year student Zachary Spiera found that the use of non-steroidal anti-inflammatories (NSAIDs), which diminish inflammation, does not make users more susceptible to concussions and does not worsen their outcomes. This was a subject he had wondered about because he and his teammates had plied themselves with NSAIDs while playing basketball and soccer in high school and middle school.

Before launching his own research, Mr. Spiera searched through medical literature, but could not find an answer. “As a student you look up to the medical community and think there are going to be answers to your questions,” he says. “Then you see something that hasn’t been figured out yet.” He is first author on a study about this subject that was recently accepted for publication in the Journal of Neurosurgery: Pediatrics.

This spring, Jordyn Feingold will receive a joint MD and Master of Science in Clinical Research, before continuing at Mount Sinai for her residency in Psychiatry. At Research Day, she presented her work on the psychological impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on 2,579 front-line health care workers at The Mount Sinai Hospital. She and her mentor, Jonathan Ripp, MD, MPH, Dean for Well-being and Resilience and Professor of Medicine (General Internal Medicine, and Geriatrics and Palliative Medicine) recently published their findings in the journal Chronic Stress.

One of the study’s key takeaways, Ms. Feingold says, was the high prevalence—39 percent—of COVID-19-related post-traumatic stress disorder, major depressive disorder, or generalized anxiety disorder that existed among the hospital’s front-line health care workers at the peak of the pandemic last year. The “greatest driver of those symptoms was being burned out, which is significant,” she says, “because it was happening well before COVID-19 and it is something that can be addressed.” Her research also found “the greatest modifiable protective factor was feeling supported by hospital leadership.”

The COVID-19 pandemic provided a springboard for student research by others, including second-year students Cynthia Luo, Alexander Kalicki, and Kate Moody, who also presented abstracts of their studies on Research Day.

Ms. Luo studied resilience among her fellow medical students during the pandemic under the mentorship of Craig Katz, MD, Clinical Professor of Psychiatry, Global Health, and Medical Education, at Icahn Mount Sinai. She divided students into two groups: those who responded to a survey by saying the COVID-19 pandemic had been their most traumatic life event, and those who responded by saying they had experienced earlier life traumas, such as the loss or illness of a loved one. Ms. Luo then measured their responses on a resilience scale that was created at Mount Sinai. “Students who indicated a non-COVID-19 impactful life event had significantly higher resilience than those who indicated COVID-19,” says Ms. Luo. “To me that demonstrates that having prior stressful life experiences was, in some ways, protective for managing COVID stress. Potentially, these experiences helped students grow and develop their resilience behaviors before COVID-19.” Ms. Luo plans to finish compiling her research and submitting it for publication in the coming months.

Mr. Kalicki and Ms. Moody are co-authors on a study that was just accepted by the Journal of the American Geriatrics Society (JAGS), which examined the barriers to video-based telehealth access that older homebound adults faced during the pandemic. Mr. Kalicki worked as a software engineer before entering medical school and says his passion for using technology to improve health care delivery led him to pursue the project under the mentorship of Peter Gliatto, MD, Professor of Medicine (General Internal Medicine), Geriatrics and Palliative Medicine, and Medical Education at Icahn Mount Sinai. Katherine Ornstein, PhD, MPH, Associate Professor, Geriatrics and Palliative Medicine, also served as the students’ mentor.

Ms. Moody says she was drawn to the subjects of process improvement and providing a high level of health care to a population that is difficult to access. Both students helped design a survey that was completed by physicians in the Mount Sinai Visiting Doctors Program and conducted the data analysis for the study. They also created a data collection sheet for Mount Sinai’s Epic electronic health record system to systematically record information about patients’ previous telehealth use, as well as structural barriers patients may face, such as access to the internet or the capacity to pay for cellular data. The students hope that a better understanding of these barriers will help inform future interventions that are designed to reach patients with limited access to care.

Match Day 2021: Graduating Medical Students Receive Their Residency Matches

Mar 24, 2021 | Featured

Mount Sinai’s Class of 2021 received locked boxes that contained sealed envelopes with the names of the residency programs they had matched to. At noon on Match Day, they were given the code to unlock their boxes.

One-hundred forty-five students at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai learned what the next phase of their career path would be at Match Day 2021, when each of them opened a carefully sealed envelope that revealed the U.S. residency program they had “matched” to and would be attending this year following graduation. The suspenseful moments leading up to their collective and coordinated noontime “discoveries” were shared over Zoom on Friday, March 19, with 400 participants, including family, friends, and Mount Sinai faculty and staff who supported the Class of 2021 with smiles, cheers, and words of encouragement.

Each year, the matches are orchestrated through the National Resident Matching Program (NRMP), which uses mathematical algorithms to align the preferences of applicants with the preferences of residency programs available at teaching hospitals across the nation. Match Day 2021 was the largest in the NRMP’s history, with more than 42,000 applicants.

Almost two-thirds of Mount Sinai’s students will be entering residency programs at the nation’s top 20 hospitals, including Massachusetts General Hospital, Brigham & Women’s Hospital, Johns Hopkins Hospital, the Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania, Barnes Jewish Hospital, and the Cleveland Clinic. The Class of 2021 will pursue specialties such as Emergency Medicine, Anesthesiology, Pediatrics, Psychiatry, Otolaryngology, Obstetrics and Gynecology, General Surgery, and Internal Medicine—the most popular discipline, which drew 33 students.

Sixty-seven Icahn Mount Sinai students will enter residencies at the Mount Sinai Health System, which runs the largest residency program in the country. These Mount Sinai alumni will be joined by newcomers to the Health System—including students from 18 of the nation’s top 20 medical schools—all of whom will begin their programs in July. Residents from leading medical schools in countries such as Argentina, India, Ireland, and Japan will be among them.

James Blum, who matched to the Emergency Medicine program at Boston Medical Center, said, “I am so excited to be heading to Boston to care for patients at an incredible institution that values health equity, where I can continue the work I started at Mount Sinai to expand access to health care.” As a medical student, Mr. Blum assumed progressive leadership roles with Mount Sinai’s East Harlem Health Outreach Partnership (EHHOP), a student-run, physician-supervised free clinic that conducts more than 1,000 patient visits annually for people who live in East Harlem.

Students Chloe Getrajdman and Jonathan Pan were excited about their next steps, too. Ms. Getrajdman will be specializing in Obstetrics and Gynecology as a resident at Mount Sinai. The time she spent working at EHHOP’s Women’s Health Clinic, she says, “has inspired me to continue working with the East Harlem community and alongside physicians who are passionate about providing care to underserved populations.” Mr. Pan, who also held leadership roles in EHHOP, will be pursuing a combined Internal Medicine and Pediatrics residency in Houston, at Baylor College of Medicine.

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, congratulated the students on their “fantastic” match results. He said the COVID-19 pandemic had posed enormous challenges for the entire medical community and that Mount Sinai’s students had played an important role in helping the Health System. He said they had also become more resilient along the way.

“This has been a year like no other,” he told the students. “You will never forget your fourth year in medical school and that is a good thing because you have grown to become not only outstanding physicians but also resilient individuals. When you meet challenges later on in life you will look back on this year with pride and say, ‘I can overcome this obstacle.’”

A Photographer Provides a Unique Look Inside Mount Sinai Brooklyn During the COVID-19 Pandemic

Mar 18, 2021 | Community, Featured

Last fall, an accomplished freelance photographer working for The New York Times was given access inside Mount Sinai Brooklyn to document the care being provided to COVID-19 patients.

One of the images recently appeared in a lengthy photo essay titled “A City Ruptured” showing the changes to New York’s economy due to the pandemic. And the photographer, Ashley Gilbertson, a New York City resident known for his photographs of wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, shared additional images.

The black and white photos are dramatic and moving, and they provide a rare glimpse of a hospital doing what is necessary to care for patients and serve its community during a time of crisis.

“As I look at these images, what I see is staff, nurses, techs, and doctors, providing care for very sick and fragile patients,” says Peter Shearer, MD, FACEP, Chief Medical Officer and Vice President, Medical Staff, at Mount Sinai Brooklyn.

He adds, “One year into this pandemic we only have a few, modestly effective new medications for COVID-19. What keeps these patients from dying is the endless care that staff provides: care is encouraging confused patients to keep their uncomfortable oxygen masks on; care is helping a patient spend time lying on their belly; care is ambulating patients so they don’t weaken during their stay. Providing this care is hard work, and these people have been doing it day and night for over a year. The staff also provides care to co-workers, and that sense of community keeps us going.”

Mount Sinai Employees Reflect as a Community One Year into the Pandemic

Mar 16, 2021 | Community, COVID-19, Featured

On Thursday, March 11, 2021, Mount Sinai Health System employees marked one year since the World Health Organization declared COVID-19 a pandemic with a day of reflection.

Across Mount Sinai, at 10:30 am, 4:30 pm, and 11:30 pm, employees paused to reflect on everything they have experienced this last year—the loss of loved ones and cherished colleagues, the struggles that have helped them grow, the ways our world has changed, the means by which they find resilience, and the moments and people for whom they are grateful. Sharing this moment together allowed members of the Mount Sinai community to acknowledge where they have been, how they feel today, and how they will move forward together.

Employees at Mount Sinai Queens gathered outside to share the moment together while the Rev. Rachelle Zazzu, DDS, read a blessing and eloquently stated, “One year ago, COVID-19 changed the world. We could suddenly see the top of the tallest mountains, but not our friends and our family. And it changed us forever.”

At Mount Sinai Beth Israel, New York Eye and Ear Infirmary of Mount Sinai, and many of the surrounding ambulatory sites, leaders, chaplains, and wellness committee members rounded on all three shifts over a 24-hour period. They brought LED tea lights and sticky notes to work areas and invited staff to remember and reflect. Many expressed appreciation for the opportunity to participate. Recurrent themes included sadness about loved ones lost to COVID-19, hope about the approaching end of the pandemic, and pride in their “work families.”

The Mount Sinai Hospital, Mount Sinai-Union Square, and other ambulatory locations collected notes of resilience and loss in a central location with tea lights for the community to view and experience collectively. Many sites also shared information on Mount Sinai’s employee wellness resources.

“We had quite a bit of patient participation and a lot of valuable conversations about what people have endured in the past year, whom they have lost, and what they are grateful for,” said Lititia Satpathy, Project Manager, who organized the event at Mount Sinai-Union Square. “Hosting the event in the atrium attracted a lot of attention toward the table, and even if people did not choose to write a note or light a candle, almost everyone acknowledged the meaning behind this important day.”

Like the rest of the world, the Mount Sinai community has experienced immeasurable loss and sacrifice on an individual and community level. And yet, through groundbreaking innovation, an unwavering commitment to our patients, and exceptional agility and teamwork, Mount Sinai employees have saved thousands of lives and have vaccinated tens of thousands of people, bringing us closer as a community and closer to the end of this pandemic.

New Study Uses an Apple Watch to Measure Stress and Resilience of Health Care Workers During the Pandemic

Mar 11, 2021 | Featured

Having a strong social network of family and friends has long been associated with an individual’s happiness and ability to bounce back from life’s setbacks. Now, a team of researchers at the Mount Sinai Health System has used the Apple Watch to capture the effect of such networks on the body, as well, by connecting resilience and support with an individual’s heart rate variability (HRV)—a primary component of the body’s autonomic nervous system (ANS) and a keen indicator of the effect of stress on the body.

Zahi A. Fayad, PhD

In a preliminary study of 361 Mount Sinai health care workers conducted between April and September 2020—a period that included the height of the COVID-19 pandemic in New York City—the researchers identified characteristics that indicate whether a health care worker is prone to worsening stress from the pandemic. They found that individuals with high resilience or emotional support were protected against the effects of stress and had different ANS stress patterns compared with those who had medium or low emotional support or resilience.

The physiological measurements were captured on Apple Watches worn by the participants, who downloaded a customized app. The researchers found that the participants’ physiological results aligned with their self-reported surveys.

“Individuals may tell us about their feelings or symptoms, which is subjective, but HRV is how your body speaks and reveals itself,” says the study’s senior author, Zahi A. Fayad, PhD, Director of the BioMedical Engineering and Imaging Institute, and Professor of Radiology, and Medicine (Cardiology), at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai. HRV, which is influenced by the parasympathetic and sympathetic nervous systems, is a measure of the variation in the heart’s beat-to-beat intervals.

According to the study’s corresponding author, Robert P. Hirten, MD, Assistant Professor of Medicine (Gastroenterology), there was a range of emotional support and resilience across health care occupations.

Robert P. Hirten, MD

“One of our goals with this study was to see how the pandemic was affecting the psychological well-being of health care workers and whether we could identify features that would allow us to see which workers would be at risk from these psychological effects over time,” says Dr. Hirten. “If you’re a large health system, you want to make sure your employees have the psychological support they need so they don’t develop long-term effects from the pandemic. Measuring resilience and emotional support may be one way to identify at-risk health care workers.”

The study was initiated at the same time the Mount Sinai Center for Stress, Resilience, and Personal Growth was launched by the Mount Sinai Health System. This comprehensive, first-of-its-kind initiative was designed to help front-line workers manage the ongoing psychosocial effects of the COVID-19 pandemic through workshops, counseling, and wellness apps.

Drs. Fayad and Hirten say that going forward, combining their study with the interventions available through the Center for Stress, Resilience, and Personal Growth will allow Mount Sinai’s most vulnerable health care workers to build resilience and feel they are part of a supportive network.

“COVID-19 disrupted many lives, not only from a health point of view but from routines and social interactions,” says Dr. Fayad. “Many people will recover and that’s resilience. But some other people may not and that’s why we need to offer interventions. That is the power of this technology. It provides us with information you wouldn’t capture in a visit to the doctor or the hospital, but it would be helpful to integrate into our daily life.”

Dr. Hirten says the team’s next steps will be to “study the effects of resilience-building interventions on HRV, the ANS, and on improving the well-being of health care workers.”

In December, Drs. Fayad and Hirten published the results of a separate study among health care workers that showed an Apple Watch detected subtle changes in an individual’s heartbeat that signaled the onset of COVID-19 up to seven days before they were diagnosed with the infection.

These charts below show differences in the nervous system over 24 hours in those with high, medium, and low resilience and emotional support.

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