Provider Services
May 2022 Patient Letters
April 28, 2022–Our VNSNY colleagues continue to prove how resilient, dedicated and just plain amazing the entire VNSNY organization is! The following are excerpts from a few of the many recent letters, phone calls, and emails we’ve received from grateful patients and clients as well as family members that reflect an outstanding consumer experience. Bronx Thank You for the Wonderful Care! “I am writing to thank you for the wonderful care I received from your nurse, Sultana Alibasic,” wrote one Bronx home care patient. “My primary care physician connected me to VNSNY to care for a huge open wound that did not heal properly from abdominal surgery. Sultana treated me almost daily for over a month and would not discharge me until the wound was 100% healed.” The patient described Sultana as kind, caring and professional. “I am very grateful to Sultana and always looked forward to her visits. She wasn’t just
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Overcoming COVID-19 to Bring Families Together at the VNSNY Goodman Brown Hospice Residence
May 7, 2020–The VNSNY Shirley Goodman and Himan Brown Hospice Residence on Second Avenue in Manhattan is a rare oasis of calm in the storm of the coronavirus pandemic. As they care for a reduced patient census due to room renovations—the residence now has three residents rather than the usual eight—VNSNY Hospice nurse Cynthia McGill and her Goodman Brown colleagues are fulfilling VNSNY Hospice and Palliative Care’s mission to the utmost, increasing quality of life at the end of life. “It’s much more than custodial care,” says Cynthia. “We can really spend time with patients, getting to know them and building a deeper relationship.” Besides tending to symptoms and other physical needs, the VNSNY Goodman Brown Hospice staff’s days include sharing patients’ memories of lives fully lived and helping them connect with loved ones. With no visitors allowed because of the coronavirus, this means connecting by FaceTime, which brings great joy to
Helping a Queens Family Survive a Multi-Generational Impact of COVID-19
May 6, 2020–In East Elmhurst, Queens, one of New York City’s neighborhoods hardest-hit by the coronavirus, VNSNY Home Care nurse Cidric Trinidad has been making regular visits to the home of a multi-generational family heavily impacted by the pandemic. The family was mourning a grandmother lost to COVID-19, their grandfather had just come home from the hospital, and seven out of eight other family members were asymptomatic but testing positive for the illness. In addition to delivering much-needed clinical care for the grandfather, Cidric, a nurse with Queens Branch 1 who has been with VNSNY for 15 years, was also there to educate the family. “They were not aware of a lot of things,” he says. “In the hospital, nurses and doctors don’t have a chance to explain things to them. And while there’s a lot of information on television, it can be confusing.” The family is primarily Spanish-speaking, and while Cidric
VNSNY Hospice Liaison Nurses: Providing Vital Connections at the End of Life
May 4, 2020–As the name suggests, VNSNY’s hospice liaisons are true connectors—and never has that role been more important than today, when New York City’s hospitals are overwhelmed by patients in the final stages of COVID-19. These courageous, compassionate hospice liaisons, all of whom are nurses, are finding ways to connect families to their loved ones in hospital ICUs, even though quarantine and social distancing protocols prevent face-to-face visits. At the same time, the nurse liaisons are also connecting these patients with the palliative care they need to live their final hours comfortably, free of symptoms such as pain and distressed breathing. “There’s never been a greater need for hospice services,” says Diane Lynch, a VNSNY hospice liaison who is working out of a makeshift trailer behind busy NYU Langone Hospital–Brooklyn. “Every little step we take to give comfort, reduce symptoms, and give families emotional support is so important. It’s what we
Providing Physical Therapy to COVID-19 Patients: “They are People Who Need Us”
April 28, 2020–Physical therapist Leah Sansano was apprehensive at first about visiting patients recovering from COVID-19. But the minute she met her first COVID-19 patient—an older man just discharged from the hospital—and his devoted daughter, she immediately understood the power of her role and its deep rewards. “These are human beings—they are not the virus,” says Leah, who works in VNSNY Home Care’s Queens Branch 2 and has been with VNSNY since 2005. “They are people who need us and shouldn’t be left behind.” To care for her COVID-19 patients, Leah puts on personal protective equipment (PPE) and conducts an initial in-home evaluation to assess functional ability and develop an exercise plan. She also assesses the need for (and orders, if necessary) equipment such as a walker, commode and wheelchair. Recovering COVID-19 positive patients are generally extremely weak and need considerable therapy to recover and restore prior function, including walking and performing
For This COVID-19 Patient, Home Care Made Coming Home Possible
April 27, 2020–As a caring daughter, Judith Harrison knew she wanted to bring her mother, who had recently tested positive for COVID-19, home from the nursing home where she was staying. Her mother clearly wanted that too. Beyond physically moving her mother, though, Judith didn’t know what should happen next. Fortunately, VNSNY Home Care nurse Nina Miro did. “Judith told me, ‘I’m going to pick up my mom with all her belongings, and after that, I don’t know what to do.’ I said, ‘We’ll help you get doctor’s orders to take care of your mother at home,’” says Nina, a member of Queens Branch 2 who has been with VNSNY for 20 years. Nina’s husband, an NYPD sergeant, works with Judith, who is also employed by the NYPD as a Deputy Chief. “Like so many people, she was unclear about what steps to take next and exactly how home care could help.”
VNSNY Heroes of 2020: Along with Clinical Care, A VNSNY Nurse Delivers Groceries and Peace of Mind
April 22, 2020–On her way to a new start-of-care visit with an elderly woman returning home from the hospital, VNSNY Home Care nurse Diane Velilla first stopped at a bodega along the way to pick up some essentials: bread, bananas and a few other nutritious foods that she knew the patient might not have. This is the kind of personal, holistic care that VNSNY delivers to New York’s most vulnerable—care that’s more important than ever during the coronavirus emergency. Before her scheduled nursing visit, Diane had received a concerned call from Jayitha Janardhanan, a nurse practitioner at Mount Sinai Heart, the patient’s hospital, who was worried that the patient might not have any food in her home. Diane decided to go a step further: On her own time and with her own money, she purchased some groceries for the patient. “I said to myself, ‘Before I see her, I’m going to get
Delivering Care and Compassion to COVID-19 Positive Patients and Their Caregivers
April 21, 2020–The COVID-19 pandemic has created a once-in-a-lifetime global crisis—and in times of crisis, the Visiting Nurse Service of New York is quick to mobilize to protect society’s most vulnerable. This includes our courageous VNSNY Home Care teams, who are delivering recovery care to COVID-19 positive patients in the place they most want to be: their homes. “I’m so happy that COVID-19 patients are coming home,” says Ruth Caballero, a nurse who works in Manhattan Branch 7 and has been with VNSNY for 19 years. “I can’t imagine how isolating it has been, not to see their families and with medical staff in the hospitals limiting time with patients. Our visit may be the longest amount of time that a healthcare worker has spent with them. We’re committed to doing whatever we can to help patients return to the community, and ultimately return to their optimal level of health and wellness.”
CMHS’s Assertive Community Treatment Nurses: Fostering Stability in Uncertain Times
April 20, 2020–While much of New York is on hold because of the coronavirus pandemic, the dedicated behavioral health nurses of VNSNY’s Assertive Community Treatment (ACT) program have been working extra hard to connect with their clients. The ACT, which is part of VNSNY’s Community Mental Health Services (CMHS), provides care to individuals who are dealing with severe mental illness and substance abuse, making sure they take their medications and that they have the housing, food and essential mental health treatment they need to keep them on a healthy path. The COVID-19 emergency has made this job more complicated: The ACT teams have been trying to reduce their home visits and move clients to oral medications where possible, but many still require intramuscular medication (IM)—injections delivered by a nurse—because they have trouble taking their oral medications consistently. And so the program’s nurses continue to make regular trips to see these clients and
A Nurse Manager’s Innovations Keep VNSNY’s Nurse-Family Partnership on Track During the Pandemic
April 16, 2020–When the highly contagious COVID-19 coronavirus touched down in New York, it caught many off guard by how quickly it spread—but not Carolyn Sime, a Nurse Manager with VNSNY’s Nurse-Family Partnership (NFP) in Nassau County. Almost overnight, Carolyn transformed the program’s manual patient records system into an electronic documentation system, then trained the NFP nursing teams in the new system so they could safely support their first-time mothers and moms-to-be—even as the health crisis grew day by day. VNSNY’s NFP programs provide free, in-home nursing, parenting and career assistance to more than 1,000 low-income mothers and their children in the Bronx and Nassau County. As the pandemic unfolded and social distancing policies were put in place, nurses in the program began conducting telehealth encounters with their clients by phone and computer in lieu of home visits. The only problem were the traditional paper records that had to be completed to