In March 2023, Mount Sinai launched its second confidential employee engagement survey, called Your Voice Counts (YVC). Following the first YVC survey released in 2021, which sparked a number of changes to help employees take breaks and disconnect from work, the second survey received feedback from more than 23,600 faculty and staff members across the Health System on how to make Mount Sinai a safer, more equitable workplace.
“Your Voice Counts is about taking an honest assessment of where we are and how we can work together to make Mount Sinai a better place to work and a better place to receive care for our patients,” says Vicki LoPachin, MD, MBA, Senior Vice President and Chief Medical Officer, Mount Sinai Health System, and executive sponsor of Your Voice Counts. “Listening to staff’s perspectives and incorporating their feedback are critical to improving.”
Several themes rose to the top of the results, which were released in June 2023. “Our staff find meaning in their work and feel connected to their colleagues,” says Jane Maksoud, RN, MPA, Senior Vice President and Chief Human Resources Officer, Mount Sinai Health System, who is also an executive sponsor of Your Voice Counts. “Their major priorities are around safety and equity—for themselves and their patients. They also want to feel recognized for doing great work.”
A Your Voice Counts employee story board showcases employee insights about what matters most to them at Mount Sinai.
Leaders across the Health System are addressing these assessments with action. For example, they launched Beyond the Badge, a one-hour monthly recognition event where staff are recognized for going above and beyond. So far, more than 500 staff members have been recognized and have shared their wisdom on monthly Zoom calls while colleagues and family members cheer them on in the chat.
“While this work at the Health System is really important, we know that it’s our day-to-day experiences on our teams that really impact how we feel about coming to work each day,” says Mariana Pugliese, Senior Manager for Your Voice Counts, which is part of the Office of the Chief Medical Officer, Mount Sinai Health System. “This is the exciting part about Your Voice Counts—each leader can look at aggregated results for their team, so they can celebrate what’s going well and work together with the team to make super-targeted improvements that are customized and meaningful.”
Some inspiring examples of teams who took such action in 2023 include the 9E Med-Surge Telemetry Unit at Mount Sinai Morningside, the KCC 4 North Unit at The Mount Sinai Hospital, and Mount Sinai Kravis Children’s Hospital.
9E Med-Surge Telemetry Unit
The 9E Med-Surge Telemetry Unit significantly reduced the number of patients who fell in their unit by incorporating falls prevention into their daily huddles and shifts, created a storyboard for recording data on where and when falls occurred, and identified interventions to reduce falls, including frequent observations of high-risk patients and installing bed alarms. These efforts resulted in more than reduced falls.
“The staff now actively communicate and suggest ideas, not just regarding falls, but also involving the overall improvement of the unit,” says Omar Camba, MBA, BSN, RN, Nurse Manager, Mount Sinai Morningside. “We have seen staff work on areas such as stress reduction, creating more efficient workflows, providing safer care to patients, sharing what supplies and equipment we require, and more. The work environment has vastly improved, with the staff now more involved and engaged in the unit’s development.”
Omar Camba, MBA, BSN, RN
KCC 4 North Unit
The KCC 4 North Unit improved staff’s professional growth and development, reinvigorated some of its unit-based councils, including those focused on falls prevention. By focusing on the continuous learning and growth of their nurses, the team also improved patients’ care and safety. The unit is now in the top two for the highest patient experience scores in the category of Teamwork in 2023 and is the unit with the most patient discharges before noon (DBNs) in the hospital for November.
“I share regular data updates with the team so they’re aware of our progress and recognize the nurse with the highest DBNs each week with an award,” says Judy Bleza, BSN, RN, Assistant Nurse Manager, GP 7 East/KCC 4 North, Mount Sinai Fuster Heart Hospital. “We are able to accomplish this with open lines of communication, respectful interactions, and collaboration as a team. Respect and listening are at the center of our team.”
Judy Bleza, BSN, RN
The Mount Sinai Kravis Children’s Hospital
The Mount Sinai Kravis Children’s Hospital decided to focus on improving throughput—the journey of patients from admission to discharge.
“We are considering how to improve hospital throughput by looking at the whole system of care, not just performance within individual patient care units or for subgroups of patients,” says John Bucuvalas, MD, FAASLD, FAST, Chief of Hepatology and Vice Chair of Faculty Affairs, Jack and Lucy Clark Department of Pediatrics, Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai, and Director, Solid Organ Transplant Outreach Recanati/Miller Transplantation Institute. “The hospital must be considered an interconnected, interdependent system of care.”
John Bucuvalas, MD, FAASLD, FAST
To achieve these aims, team leaders identified early-career faculty and staff to become champions in their areas and created a peer-to-peer mentoring program for Pediatrics faculty. “We have had two cycles so far, with 14 participants, who meet for seven sessions to discuss various topics around identifying purpose, leading and motivating teams, ensuring a culture of curiosity and learning, and decision-making,” Dr. Bucuvalas says. “We also have created pre- and post-program assessments to measure the impact of this work.”
Dr. LoPachin and Ms. Maksoud expressed gratitude for all who participated in the Your Voice Counts survey. “We’re so thankful to our more than 23,000 faculty and staff who took the time to share their feedback and comments with us.”
In our patients’ own words
“All of the nurses in the postpartum unit were excellent, and very professional and caring. Mel stands out because she gave us extraordinary care and was so attentive and warm that we were convinced we were her only patients. She came and checked on us frequently and gave me a pump to use while I was nursing so I could collect milk from the other breast as well. She was just an amazing person to meet and made our experience outstanding while we were inpatient.”
− Patient at The Mount Sinai Hospital