Victory Greens, Lenox Hill Hospital’s rooftop garden, has recently opened for its 4th growing season
Written by: Pamela Johnson
What is Victory Greens?
Victory Greens, supported by both Lenox Hill Hospital (LHH) Administration and the health system’s GreenBERG, is a rooftop garden created for everyone who works at LHH to enjoy. Last year, I was given the opportunity to manage the garden, which has been as great a pleasure for me as the success we’ve had for employees.
Over 18,000 visits were made to the garden by LHH employees last year, a significant increase over the prior year. Last year, we hosted 8 Snipping Events that were attended by over 600 employees. At the events, employees had the chance to take home fresh herbs and produce from the garden and learn how to use them in new recipes, drinks and more. One employee who had never cooked with fresh herbs was so inspired by the garden’s bounty that she changed her entire eating habits. She lost 30 pounds and was able to go off of her blood pressure medicine by the end of the snipping season.
This year we are expanding the Snipping Events to include an educational component. We’ll be hosting programs targeting Body, Mind, and Spirit as well as a program on Nutrition and Cooking and one on Exercise. We’ll also be having our first “Mobile Garden” this season, which will allow us to deliver “snippings” to our colleagues at off-site facilities so they may enjoy products from the garden.
Benefits of our rooftop garden- patients and employees
Recent scientific studies have shown that it is critical for a person’s mental and physical health and overall well-being to have at least one direct touch with nature/day. Victory Greens allows us to have a touch of nature, even on a rooftop in NYC.
After a hard shift or a long day, the garden offers employees a place of solace, rest and fresh air, which is important after working inside all day or night. The rooftop garden also presents a wonderful opportunity to meet fellow employees, many of whom would, otherwise, never come into contact with one another. Numerous friendships have been formed over lunch or catching sun rays in the garden. In fact, the garden affords the opportunity to touch everyone in the LHH community, including our patients. Herbs from the garden are used in patient meals as well as in the cafeteria and in the catered events we often host for guests.
Fun fact: There’s at least one species indigenous to every continent represented in the garden and nearly 100 varieties of plants, herbs, vegetables, and fruit are currently growing on the rooftop.
Giving back to our community
Victory Greens has also led to the development of a wonderful relationship with our Community Partner, Harlem Grown. Harlem Grown is an organization whose mission is to inspire youth to lead healthy, productive, fulfilling lives. Through mentorship and urban farming, Harlem Grown increases access to, and knowledge of, healthy food for Harlem residents and provides garden-based development programs to Harlem youth. Our relationship with Harlem Grown began last summer and our programs and connections continue to grow. We have held a number of highly successful outreach events with the Harlem Grown community, including hosting a Teaching Kitchen event which offered information about nutrition, healthy eating and growing herbs and our most recent event in recognition of Earth Day, where we helped children from PS 197 plant flowers around their school. A mix of employees from clinical to non-clinical volunteered to participate in these events and they all have said their experience was as rewarding for them as it was the kids.
How it’s impacted my life
Personally, Victory Greens has had a profound impact on my life. Through the garden, I’ve been able to connect with colleagues I never would have met. I’ve had the opportunity to make a deep commitment to the community around us as well as to make a sincere pledge to help preserve the environment. I’ve taken an active role in The GreenBERG, Northwell Health’s Business Employee Resource Group focused on environmentally conscientious initiatives. The mission of The GreenBERG is to improve the environmental impact of our facilities by advancing sustainable and socially responsible efforts across Northwell Health and in our communities.
From my involvement with Victory Greens and The GreenBERG, I’ve learned many things and have transformed my view of our planet. I now only wear clothing to work that is made out of sustainable materials, and I have developed a keen interest in trying to resolve recycling and other waste issues that plague hospitals. Who knows what solutions we may ultimately discover, but the magic of Victory Greens seems to be far reaching and highly impactful. Imagine…all that may, and all that has, come from an extraordinary rooftop garden at Lenox Hill Hospital.
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Leading the transformation of health care – our people were made for this!
“Buckle up, because we’re going to be going to places we’ve never been before.” – Maureen White, RN, VP, Chief Nursing Executive
This is no time for “business as usual” or following the “status quo” or any other cliché you can think of. We’re defining the healthcare industry of tomorrow! That means we HAVE to think differently and deliver innovative solutions to achieve results we’ve never achieved before. To make our communities healthier, we’ll need to get out of our comfort zones as healthcare leaders. Above all, we need to drive nursing excellence through highly-engaged leaders.
That is exactly what happened at this year’s Nursing Leadership Retreat, “Beyond Boundaries: The Amazing Race to the 90th Percentile”. Held on May 15 and 16, approximately 220 nursing leaders – Nurses Executives, Nursing Directors, Nurse Practitioners, Nurse Managers, and High Potential Bedside Nurses – attended the retreat. The goal – to take our engagement and satisfaction scores to the 90th percentile and beyond! You could tell from day one that things were going to be different.
On the first day, we broke from past retreats by engaging participants like never before with games, puzzles and even a scavenger hunt. The participants divided into teams and were asked to explore various companies in the Midtown Manhattan area. Each activity served to challenge the participants’ teamwork, communication, creativity, and awareness of their surroundings. The challenges focused on developing best practices for customer experience, employee engagement, quality standards, and identifying characteristics of the best places to work.
On the second day, we heard the insights of a wide variety of exceptional presenters, including Dr. Jim Merlino, formerly the Chief Patient Experience Officer at the Cleveland Clinic and presently the President & Chief Medical Officer of the Strategic Consulting Division at Press Ganey. Dr. Merlino shared his strategies and experiences regarding how to lead an organization in patient experience. He also included Northwell Health specific recommendations in his discussion based on his knowledge of the health system’s Press Ganey performance.
- Dr. Jim Merlino, formerly the Chief Patient Experience Officer at the Cleveland Clinic and presently the President & Chief Medical Officer of the Strategic Consulting Division at Press Ganey. Dr. Merlino shared his strategies and experiences regarding how to lead an organization in patient experience. He also included Northwell Health specific recommendations in his discussion based on his knowledge of the health system’s Press Ganey performance.
- Darren Williams, of the Barry Wehmiller Leadership Institute and Simon Sinek who presented on “Finding the CEO in Yourself” and developing the leader in others. They explored who to find fulfillment in watching others actualize their fullest potential.
As we move forward, we identified a number of topics to focus on in our efforts to remain at the forefront of the healthcare field:
- The future of health care on a national and local level:
- External factors that will influence/effect Northwell Health such as competition, the economy and the ACA
- Strategies for addressing these external factors:
- The role of Nursing in meeting the strategic vision of the health system
At Northwell Health, we’re revolutionizing every area of health care. If you have a pioneering spirit and a forward-looking attitude, you were made for this. Come be part of it and learn more here.
“If you want to accomplish something, you have to believe it’s always possible.” – Maureen White
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Made for this™ – our employee promise
By Elaine Page, Chief People Innovation Officer
Why did we develop our employee promise?
Our employee promise defines our experience as employees. We wanted to be able to truly articulate who we are and what we do. It’s what you get, for what you put in. In other words, it’s the deal. Made for this defines what our “best days” look like, so we can create more of them for everyone, every day.
We wanted to be able to differentiate our culture and describe what sets us apart – in health care and beyond. This is extremely important because every single person, regardless of their position or the facility that they work at – is truly a part of what makes us special.
Our employee promise will give us a competitive edge – not only will it help us develop, motivate and retain the great people we already have working in the organization, we’ll be able to use it to attract the best new people.
Our journey to create our employee promise
We created an employee promise that proudly and authentically expresses our culture. 2000 employees in 74 sessions— from across various roles and facilities — shared their experience of what it was really like to work here —and didn’t hold back. Their voices were powerful, meaningful and true and their conclusion was clear: being made for this is what sets us apart. Made for this is how we define the Northwell Health difference.
Thanks to their honesty, we now have an incredible employee promise to be proud of. Made by our people, for our people.
Our team members described what a great day looked like and what a challenging day looked like. They said that when they look at their overall experience of Northwell Health, the good times outweigh the tough times. The “best days” outweigh the worst. But, we all want more “best days.”
Made for this – for our people, by our people
We all own the culture of Northwell Health and our experience at work as employees and we believe the culture is ours to shape.
Our team members bring individuality to how we care for people – our patients, community, and each other. We’re not like everyone else….we’re unique and our promise celebrates that. Our reality is powerful, emotional, hard, funny and wonderful, all at the same time. And that’s OK. Because we are a part of something great – we’re made for this.
Are YOU made for Northwell Health?
By creating an employee promise we’re now able to hire the best industry talent that perfectly fit within our culture. We’re flexible, hardworking and not afraid to push boundaries. If you think you’re made for this, check out a role with us – we’d love to welcome you to our Northwell Health family.
Find out more about our employee promise here.
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Partnering with Make-A-Wish foundation – two companies whose missions are aligned
Written by: Michele Grossman
One of the main focuses of Northwell Health is providing patients and their families with the best experience possible in situations they didn’t necessarily choose to be in. Most of us chose to work for a healthcare organization because of the intrinsic good with the services we provide, yet working in a corporate office you don’t necessarily get to see the impact your work has on patient experience.
Corporate HR’s office culture committee was created to plan fun events and activities for employees at the 1111 Marcus Ave offices. After raising employee engagement in our office we wanted to take our committee to the next level and help the community. Luckily, we discovered that Make-A-Wish was our neighbors in the building. They hosted a lunch-and-learn for our staff and we realized that their mission and our mission were aligned, and that our employees were interested in giving back to this organization. We decided to partner with them and have our employees work together to raise money to sponsor wishes for children with life threatening illnesses. Make-A-Wish committed that the children we would sponsor would be children who are being treated at Cohen’s Children’s Medical Center (CCMC) – this would allow us to take patient experience to the next level.
In May 2016 we kicked off the Make-A-Wish pilot with all of the Northwell Health corporate business areas. This would give us a chance to see if the program would be successful and give the corporate employees a chance to touch upon a level of patient experience they weren’t able to previously. When starting this program, our goal was to raise $10,000 (enough to sponsor one child’s wish) by the annual Walk for Wishes in September. Throughout the summer the corporate offices hosted a variety of fundraising events including the “Wall of Stars”, raffling off reserved parking spaces, wearing blue for Make-A-Wish, jeans days, raffling an Apple Watch, employee car washes, etc. All of these events led us to raise over $22,000, doubling our goal and allowing us to sponsor wishes for two children!
The two children we were picked to sponsor both were diagnosed with Leukemia and were being treated at CCMC. Seraphina, age 10, wished to travel to Paris and go to Disneyland while she was there. Alexander, age 18, wished to go on a tropical vacation so he was scheduled to travel to Hawaii. In the spirit of Thanksgiving, the culture committee threw Seraphina and Alexander a send-off party before going on their trips and invited all of the corporate office liaisons to attend as a thank you for all of their hard work and fundraising efforts. It was a great day filled with beautiful decorations and all of Seraphina and Alexander’s favorite foods and desserts. Both families were so touched by what we did for them and it was so nice to be able to lift the spirits of these children. Since this pilot was so successful we were going to roll this program out to all of Northwell Health in 2017 so we can continue to raise the standard of care our patients receive, which goes far beyond the correct treatments, but helps them and their families mentally and emotionally. We look forward to helping more of our patients at CCMC throughout 2017 with the help of Make-A-Wish foundation.
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If you are an individual with a disability requesting an accommodation for the application process, please click the contact us link above to request assistance.
Learn more about our hiring experience.
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© 2021 - Northwell Health
Click here to view the “EEO is the law” poster.
It is Northwell Health’s policy to provide equal employment opportunity and treat all applicants and employees equally regardless of their age, race, creed/religion, color, national origin, immigration status or citizenship status, sexual orientation, military or veteran status, sex/gender, gender identity, gender expression, disability, pregnancy, genetic information or genetic predisposition or carrier status, marital or familial status, partnership status, victim of domestic violence, sexual or other reproductive health decisions, or other characteristics protected by applicable law.
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