This past week many of our Northwell Health facilities have been participating in national Patient Experience Week.  This annual event promotes how healthcare staff impacts patient experience every day and our employees are honored, recognized and re-inspired. Our 61,000 employees are dedicated to providing quality care with compassion. Patient Experience Week is one way Northwell extends its heartfelt appreciation and encourages continued efforts on behalf of patients and families. The Culture of C.A.R.E. which stands for Connectedness, Awareness, Respect and Empathy, is our promise to our patients and families. Storytelling is a powerful forum for hearing the “voice” of our patients and families and so, this week incredible patient stories were shared by reading letters aloud and watching video testimonials.

Across our organization, teams rallied around patient and family experience. Fun celebrations for our staff included recognition programs, red carpet events, photo booths, meditation sessions, smoothie bars, appreciation rounding by leaders, friendly competition activities, Culture of C.A.R.E. trivia, and team building activities. For our patients we had music performers, pet therapists, hand-written get well cards by staff and offerings of small gifts of appreciation upon discharge. Lastly, the organization went social. Using #PTEXP and #PXWeek, interdisciplinary teams across the organization posted to Facebook and Instagram, their Northwell Patient Experience pride!

At the end of the week, the Office of Patient & Corporate Experience hosted its first annual Culture of C.A.R.E. in Action Event on Friday, April 28th. It’s an experiential afternoon meant to inspire, challenge and lead patient experience influencers across our organization by sharing Northwell Health best practices. Kicked off by our Chief Experience Officer, Sven Gierlinger, and VP of Patient Experience, Aggie Barden, the event includes table top learning, academic posters and featured Ted-talk presentations. This year’s keynote speaker is Jason Wolf, President of the Beryl Institute which is the organization that started Patient Experience Week.

Happy Patient Experience Week from Northwell Health! Every Role, Every Person, Every Moment Matters.

“Northwell Health has the best laboratory teams in the state of New York. They provide you with lots of opportunities to flourish and grow.”

–Munazza Naseem, Pathologist Assistant, Northwell Health Laboratories

Northwell Health leads with innovation and breaks with convention. We continually look to advance our laboratories. The greatest component of delivering exceptional laboratory services begins with our employees.  We will provide you with the opportunity to spread your wings and define your healthcare career.

During Medical Laboratory Professionals Week, we honor those whose clinical expertise and compassionate commitment to excellence drive our exceptional care forward. Our people are inspired by the knowledge that behind every test and every procedure is a person who deserves our best at all times.

Throughout the week, we’re showing appreciation for our medical laboratory professionals with hot breakfast buffets, ice cream, games, and more. Our employees also celebrate by finding unique ways to give back to the community through events like a charity ZUMBA class and paint nights. To add an extra element of fun during this special week, employees wear their favorite team jerseys. These are just some ways that we are recognizing the contributions and impact that laboratory professionals have at Northwell Health.

Northwell Health is where the talent, expertise and knowledge of our laboratory professionals impacts our patients’ lives and contributes significantly to improving healthcare outcomes. Soon, we’ll make an even greater impact on our patient care. By 2018, our centralized laboratory we will be the largest hospital-based integrated laboratory in the country performing over 55 million lab tests annually. This translates into tremendous growth opportunities.

“When you work in a Northwell Health laboratory, you know you are connected with other lab professionals who are there to help one another.”

–Young Choi, Lead Medical Technologist, Lenox Hill Greenwich Village

“Northwell Health gives me endless opportunities to expand and improve upon my skills, abilities and knowledge that I can then use to benefit the patients and communities we serve.”

–John Shao, Medical Technologist, Northern Westchester Hospital

When it comes to your career, the right work environment is what makes the difference.

Make a difference, behind the scenes.

As a laboratory professional, you know that your contributions matter. Northwell Health is a healthcare provider that strives to enhance quality patient outcomes by continually assessing how health care is provided. The vision of our laboratory service line is exactly how we achieve our mission and goals.

Your expertise and knowledge will touch our patients’ lives and contribute significantly to our integrated healthcare team. By 2018, we will be the largest hospital-based integrated laboratory in the country performing over 55 million lab tests annually.

“Every specimen is a life to us. So even though we’re behind the scenes, everyone in the lab is valued as a highly skilled, dedicated member of the healthcare team.”

— Donna Manchisi, Director of Lab Marketing and Education

Advance your career, your way.

At Northwell Health, we are committed to helping our employees define and pursue the career path that is right for them. If you have a passion for management, we’ll provide the resources and support to help get you there.

If you want to remain in a hands-on technology role, we will provide you with the continuing education you need to enhance your skills.

We have the opportunity, and with a growth rate of 20% per year, the question isn’t how you’ll grow, it’s when will you start.

Come and join our team. Experience it for yourself.

Laboratory Professionals Interview Day – May 4

Join us and explore a wide range of opportunities, including:

• Blood Bank Technologists
• Laboratory Lead Technologists
• Laboratory Technologists
• Laboratory Technicians
• Laboratory Managers
• Laboratory Supervisors

With 16 hospital labs and our centralized state-of-the art laboratory, we have positions on Long Island, the five boroughs and Westchester – your career is calling.

What do you need to be successful?

To succeed as a laboratory professional at Northwell Health, you need passion, drive and the ability to see the bigger picture. Our standards are high, for patient care, and for the employees who justify our mission. You have to be able to multitask and be extremely organized and detail-oriented. You must be a strong team player, but also able to work independently.

“We’re looking for people with passion, people who go above and beyond while always putting the patient first. We want people who understand that there’s a person on the other side of the tube.”

–Michael Eller, Assistant Vice President, Planning & Project Management, Northwell Health Laboratories

Enjoy an exceptional culture to advance your laboratory career at Northwell Health. Come to our Interview Day on May 4. Find out more.

Earlier this year over 700 junior and senior high school students visited 50+ Northwell Health sites and service lines to learn about STEM careers as part of our 3rd Annual Spark! Challenge created by the Workforce Readiness team. During their visit students were exposed to a diverse set of clinical and non-clinical career opportunities available within the health care industry by hands-on learning “Career Days”. Students were then asked to collaborate with their team to create a career advertisement and a two minute career presentation to showcase at our Awards Ceremony.

“I don’t know how we did it, but we coordinated 8+ teams of students from Bellmore-Merrick JFK to cook a full Thanksgiving Day feast under one hour,” shares North Shore University Hospital’s head chef, Mike Kiley. “Staff from Food & Nutrition coached the students, while pushing their competitive buttons with a holiday cook-off. Not only did the teens have fun, they learned nutritional tips and how to better work as a team.”

Last week students, teachers and Northwell Health employees and executives filled the Cradle of Aviation for the Award Ceremony and over 45 schools presented on their chosen careers from their visit. The day was filled with interactive workshops and activities from various departments that included, 3D bioprinting, a CEMS simulator, Culture of Care workshop, Bioelectronic Medicine, telemedicine, a robotic surgery simulator and more.

As an organization we are always focused on educating our communities at all ages and the Workforce Readiness team does this by innovating  the way we interact with next generation professionals about vast health care careers. “There’s no industry like health care. Besides pursuing a career as a doctor or a nurse, you can also be an engineer, a chef, an accountant, a computer tech, a transporter – well the list goes on,” said President and CEO, Michael Dowling.

Everyone’s a Winner

During the awards ceremony, students and Northwell Health employees received monetary awards and myReward points respectively for 1st, 2nd and 3rd place on their presentation and careers poster. In true form, our President and CEO Michael Dowling tripled the award bucket just moments before the winners were announced.

In total, over $12,000 in prize money went to students from Tottenville High School, Sacred Heart Academy, Valley Central High School and Glen Cove High School for their clarity, enthusiasm, and content in the Presentation Award category. We also awarded over $14,000 in prize money to students from Amityville High School, Baldwin High School, Bellmore-Merrick JFK High School, and Valley Stream Central High School for their creativity in the Poster Award category.

“We have doubled our participation from both students and Northwell Health sites since last year,” says Lauren Pearson, Manager, Workforce Readiness. “What a truly amazing and inspiring day. I am so grateful to work here, doing a job I love, surrounded by amazing people and leadership.”

Promoting STEM Careers

With STEM careers on the rise, educating students early on is a high priority at Northwell Health. One of the many goals throughout the Spark! Challenge is to ignite student’s interest in the STEM careers we have throughout our health system. With each unique site/service line visit, these students received an in-depth look as to the many clinical and non-clinical career paths we have available. Our employees know these students will be our next leaders and want to show them the endless opportunities a career in health care can provide for them, and support them in their journey.

In the words of Michael Dowling, “Never believe you can’t do something. When you get up each day, try, and then perfect that process and move forward again. Don’t be stagnant. Always keep moving. There is no limit to your success.”

 Learn more about our student initiatives.

Are you ready to work on the leading edge of one of the most exciting areas of medical research today? Bioelectronic Medicine is revolutionizing health care by replacing drugs with electrons – using devices to guide nerves to control molecular targets. The possibilities for changing and saving lives are limitless.

“We are on the cusp of treating diseases in new ways that we would not have been imagining five years ago.” –Christopher Czura, PhD, Vice President, Scientific Affairs

Our researchers are learning the language of neural signals and using Bioelectronic Medicine technologies to record, stimulate, and block neural signals.

We’re teaching the body how to heal itself – without side effects.

Beyond even this, we’re exploring how bioelectronics can help us perform early diagnosis to enhance treatment and achieve more successful outcomes.

Revolutionizing how we treat illness and injuries.

The amazing work happening at Northwell Health’s Feinstein Institute for Medical Research is opening up exceptional opportunities in a wide range of areas. We use a team-based approach that combines our expertise in neurophysiology, neuroscience, molecular and cell biology, and bioengineering. We identify physiological triggers, develop new research tools, and medical device technology to ‘tap into’ neural pathways in the body to treat disease and injury. Get to know the positions that make up our team:

Under the direction of Chad Bouton, VP of Advanced Engineering and Director of the Center for Bioelectronic Medicine, we’re developing therapeutic breakthroughs for an incredible variety of injuries and diseases, such as:

• Bleeding/Hemorrhage – We developed the neural tourniquet, a Bioelectronic Medical device that uses electronic nerve stimulation to slow blood loss.
• Paralysis – Limiting damage and providing a pro-regenerative environment to nerve cells after spinal cord injury.
• Cancer – We’re discovering and validating new biomarkers which may serve as targets for Bioelectronic Medicine in various cancers.
• Rheumatoid Arthritis – Electrically stimulating the vagus nerve could turn off the immune system pathways associated with rheumatoid arthritis and other inflammatory diseases.
• Sepsis – We’re developing methods of preventing sepsis and investigating mechanisms underlying the cognitive and physical impairment that occurs in up to 25% of sepsis survivors.
• Colitis – Our researchers have shown that activation of the vagus nerve reduces the symptoms of colitis.
• Crohn’s Disease – We have developed a device to stimulate the vagus nerve in order to activate the body’s natural inflammatory reflex.
• Diabetes – Our research suggests that a small bioelectronics device, implanted on the vagus nerve, may be able to regulate the production of and cellular response to insulin.
• Lupus – We’re studying genetic information to identify individuals who are at risk for developing autoimmune diseases such as Lupus.
• Obesity and Metabolic Syndrome – Proper regulation of vagus nerve-mediated anti-inflammatory signaling might provide an effective treatment of obesity.

The role you can play.

“We are bringing together people from completely different disciplines, into the same area, working together, collaborating and innovating to create new technologies.” — Chad Bouton, VP of Advanced Engineering and Director of the Center for Bioelectronic Medicine

• Molecular Biologists – Target the molecular sources of disease
• Neuroscientists – Identify the neural pathway to manipulate the targeted source
• Neural Electrical Engineers/Computer Scientists – Design the device to manipulate the appropriate pathway in order to treat the disease

Through this unique approach, our employees are developing effective solutions that are less expensive than pharmaceuticals, easier to administer, non-toxic, and more precise. The innovations you produce will minimize health risks and side effects, while offering an extensible R&D platform.

“It’s an extraordinary time to be here and it’s extremely exciting to think about what’s coming next.” –Kevin J. Tracey, MD, President & CEO

Learn more.