2017 President’s Awards Winner: Innovation

Huntington Hospital Oncology Unit 1 North

Here at Northwell Health we are continuously encouraging our employees to be their best, and last week at our 11th Annual Presidents Awards Gala we honored those who aren’t satisfied with settling and are always pushing boundaries.

The annual President’s Award Program honors and celebrates individuals and teams who represent the very best of the organization. These employees surpass Northwell Health’s expectations, standards of excellence, and drive innovative business outcomes through three distinctive categories: Exceptional Patient/Customer Experience, Innovation and Teamwork. What makes this award special is that individuals or team are nominated by senior leadership for their contributions. Take a look at this year’s Innovation award winner.

Pain can overwhelm our patients in ways we can’t imagine. Unmanaged pain can make other aspects of cancer more acute – fatigue, nausea, sleep disturbance, depression, anxiety and confusion all have an impact. Being Truly Compassionate and helping our patients manage pain is at the heart of our practice. The team at Huntington Hospital created and combined multiple innovative strategies to improve pain management for oncology patients, creating a bundle which implemented best practice reliably and consistently for patients.

This team decided to utilize technology to the best of their ability and added a speed dial button on the back of the patient phone which immediately connects patients straight to their nurse, added a simple multi-alarm timers to their medication carts resetting them every time they make a pain intervention to remind them when to check back. On average, after 60 minutes, patients’ assessed pain has reduced from 48.2% to 36.8%. This is dramatically reducing the pain of oncology patients through redefining pain assessment and response. Wanting to take away our patients’ pain is the first instinct of any care-giver. That we can still innovate in this field is a remarkable tribute to a team who continually push the boundaries to redefine health care.