2018 Hospice Gratitude Luncheon: Saluting Our Staff’s Achievements
At this year’s Hospice and Palliative Care All-Staff luncheon on May 9th, each department manager or supervisor gave a short speech saluting their team’s key achievements over the past year. Following are excerpts from some of the tributes presented at the celebration.
Recognition for the Brooklyn Hospice Team
Congratulations on establishing a solid relationship with the Allure facilities as well as several other nursing homes in the borough.
Congratulations on establishing an excellent partnership with NY Langone.
We have successfully established two teams in Brooklyn with two new team managers.
Congratulations on successfully transferring into HCHB efficiently and with exceptional professionalism.
—Cassandra Collins, Clinical Director for Brooklyn and Staten Island Hospice
Recognition for the Staten Island Hospice Team
Congratulations on having a continuous increased census.
Congratulations on successfully transitioning into HCHB efficiently and with exceptional professionalism.
—Cassandra Collins, Clinical Director for Brooklyn and Staten Island Hospice
Recognition for Hospice Social Workers
“The places in which we are seen and heard are holy places. They remind us of our value as human beings. They give us the strength to go on.”
Thank you to the amazing social work staff for seeing and witnessing the pain and distress in our patients and families and your valiant efforts to help them find calm in the midst of life storms.
Thank you to the amazing social work staff for your listening ears that have helped our patients and family members feel less alone in a frightening and uncertain world.
And thank you to the amazing social work staff for holding fast to the tenets of our profession, such as autonomy, personal choice and essential human dignity, in order to find strength in the midst of uncertainty, human frailty and brokenness. Your efforts “remind us of our value as human beings.”
You have my gratitude, and the gratitude of the entire organization.
—Benyamin Cirlin, Lead Social Worker, Hospice and Palliative Care
Recognition for Hospice Support Services
I oversee the support services for Hospice, which includes the Call Team/Medical Records/Orders/and Administrative teams. This is the “behind-the-scenes” crew. In this kind of work, when everything goes right we are invisible. I know that sounds weird, but it is kind of the goal. Just like in the theater—the show is ON STAGE not behind it. The care of the patients, not the orders/phone calls/charts, is where the spotlight needs to be for the patients and families.
In this moment however, my “behind-the-scenes” team, we want to make it clear that WE see you.
We see that you all have been extraordinarily agile, rolling with the changes as we straddled the pilot and then roll-out to HomeCare HomeBase.
We see that those among you who have been part of the support team for 5, 10, 25 years have really held us together in the transition, and have been gracious and welcoming to the newer among us (over 40% of the team currently) who have been with us measuring in the months, not years. Thank you for your leadership.
We see that you (both new and seasoned) have ideas/suggestions each day to help improve our work and tweak our ever-changing processes. These ideas are fueled by the passion you each bring.
Without you all keeping us in compliance, we would have no spotlight to shine.
So, THANK YOU!
—Anne Suddaby, Director, Hospice Support Services
Recognition for the entire VNSNY Hospice and Palliative Care staff
I am very pleased to have the opportunity to once again work alongside the most incredible team of leaders, clinicians and staff as we move this organization into the next 125 years.
I thank you for being the leaders in piloting and implementing the HomeCare HomeBase solution. I am sure that there were challenges, but you are the masters of managing challenging situations in your everyday work. We will continue to work on refining HCHB to make your work easier each day.
I also thank you for your support in identifying, admitting and serving our Hospice patients. There has been growth in the last three years and there is much more opportunity out there. As the leaders of this organization, I need your support in achieving our goals, developing new and innovative programs and services and strengthening the reputation of VNSNY.
We have an opportunity to do great work together, and I look forward to being able to lead you as we take VNSNY into the future as the best payer/provider organization. Thank you for your support.
—Marki Flannery, President and CEO of Visiting Nurse Service of New York
Recognition for the Manhattan Hospice Team
A diversified team that provides care to Spanish, Russian, and Cantonese patients.
A team that is responsive to the needs of GIP patients and their caregivers!
A flexible team, always willing to re-adjust their schedule to help each other.
Excellent collaboration with NPs on managing cardiac patients.
A high-functioning team that receives many compliments from patients and caregivers.
—Natalie Cheltenham-Festa, Clinical Director, Manhattan Hospice Team
Recognition for the Bronx Hospice Team
Bronx as a collective team has a total of 132 years with VNSNY!!
Family satisfaction scores of 100% for 2 quarters in 2017.
A grateful family’s letter of praise for the Bronx team:
My family and I thank the agency’s team for their exceptional care, and devotion when caring for my mother. Every team member was extremely knowledgeable, and genuinely understanding about any concerns my family and I had. My family and I have been truly blessed to have had the care your agency gave my mother.
—Carol Seymour, Clinical Director, Queens and Bronx Hospice Teams
Recognition for the Queens Hospice Team
Queens as a collective team has a total of 259 years with VNSNY!!
Queens were the first team to complete the HCHB training modules.
A grateful family’s letter of praise for the Queens team:
My family received excellent hospice care. I do not know what we would have done without you. I don’t know how you do your jobs, but am so grateful. Thank you all so much.
—Carol Seymour, Clinical Director, Queens and Bronx Hospice Teams
Recognition for Hospice Finance and Business Operations
Hospice Finance and Business Operations is a group that you probably don’t think of until something goes wrong. We are a collection of analysts, project managers and IS specialists providing support every day behind the scenes. We’re the ones you call when you need a contract, when you need a tablet deployed or have a system issue; we prepare reports that inform how our company does business now and impacts it in the future.
We’ve been through many changes in the past year, and this small group worked incredibly hard to navigate Hospice through the transition to our new EMR, Homecare Homebase. Our goal is to provide all of you who service our patients with the very best support possible. It’s an honor to be a part of this amazing team!
—Kimberlyn Kinlock, Operations Coordinator
Recognition for: the Leads for Social Work, Spiritual Counseling, and Bereavement; Supervisor, Veterans Program; Supervisors, Intake; Director, Evenings, Nights and Weekends; Supervisor, Compliance Team
Incredible fortitude and excellence guiding the staff through highs and lows of HomeCare HomeBase.
Dedication to project development ranging from editing and developing HCHB templates, to anxiety assessment tool, to ethics matters publication, to financial reconciliation, to development of continuous care team, to engaging politicians on hospice-related issues.
Rigor and commitment to regulatory compliance while meeting the needs of our patients and family members.
In summary, they are
Creative
Passionate and
ALWAYS
Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious
(translation – fantastic)
Recognition for Admission Nurses
ARNs are often the initial face of VNSNY, providing comfort and direction as patients explore their diagnosis, clarify goals of care and explore their end-of-life choices.
ARNS are true road warriors, always flexing their schedule to meet the needs of the patients and families, and sensitive to the diversity of the New York City population.
ARNS are expert clinicians, coordinating consent, establishing initial comfort measures and communicating to various parties, including health care providers, outside agencies and VNSNY staff BEFORE regrouping and moving on to the next admission.
Recognition for Intake Coordinators
Which department is faster than a speeding bullet! More powerful than a locomotive! Able to leap tall buildings at a single bound??
Yes, it’s our Intake Coordinators.
They have changed our world in the Intake Department!
They are on the move all day and evening indexing referrals in WV, completing referrals in HomeCare HomeBase, coordinating admissions with HLs, with ARNs, working with RCD on insurance and benefit periods issues, proactively sending out request for F2F visits, coordinating with Evenings, Nights and Weekends staff for after-hours admissions, working closely with anxious family members.
They obtain consent; order equipment in Parachute; facilitate equipment delivery; coordinate appointment changes; and, always with their best customer service skills, manage the never-ending requests from referral sources, hospitals, nursing homes, and patients and families
They cover our department 8:00 a.m. to 9:00 p.m., 7 days a week. They push to make a positive difference in the lives of pts and families.
Yes, they truly are our super heroes!!
Recognition for Spiritual Care Counselors
SCCs offered compassionate spiritual care support for our patients and their families to alleviate their spiritual pains, including fear/anxiety of unknown and unpredictable end-of-life experiences; to reconnect with and reaffirm their own experiential wisdom, strengths, values, beliefs and faiths, family ties or cultural heritage in overcoming challenges; to discover or reaffirm their most important values, hopes and legacies; to make their exploration of living as fully as they can the way they wish meaningful.
SCCs developed mutual support by covering each other’s absence across the boroughs. One fellow MD shared a story during the Fellowship dinner that when he shadowed our SCC, visiting a patient whose pain was difficult to manage even with pain meds, he was so surprised to see the patient’s pain had been alleviated after the SCC’s prayer. SCCs offer non-pharmaceutical interventions to honor our patients’ lives by empowering their spiritual gifts and resources with empathic listening and therapeutic presence, spiritual counseling and religious affirmation as requested.
SCCs met every month to nurture their fellowship and mutual support as the team, and to continue learning from the members of the team from their attendance of workshops and conferences for our quality improvement.