Innovative Member Programs Advancing Compassion and Teamwork

The Corman IMPACT Honors celebrates healthcare members who are making a transformational impact by creating programs or initiatives that promote compassionate, collaborative care within their organization or system.

We know that leading by example is the most effective way to inspire others to make compassionate care a priority and we want to recognize our healthcare members who are doing that.

Please note that Schwartz Center programs (including Schwartz Rounds^®) are not eligible for consideration. We invite you to read about our 2021 Honorees below.

 

Dear friends,

I understand the power of compassion firsthand. Between five cancer diagnoses and three end-of-life journeys, including my late wife Betsy’s, we experienced the same kind of healing that inspired Ken Schwartz to establish the Schwartz Center. We were able to meet many caregivers over the years who took the extra time to understand us as people, not just as patients and family members.

As someone who has been both a beneficiary and advocate of compassionate care, I believe we cannot afford to let compassion be a nice-to-have. It must be a core value in every patient-caregiver interaction and in our nation’s healthcare system.

After Betsy lost her battle with cancer, I wanted to underwrite the IMPACT Honors as a tribute to her, and to reflect my belief that leading by example is the most effective way to inspire others.

The Corman IMPACT Honors celebrates the Schwartz Center’s healthcare members who are making a transformational impact by creating programs or initiatives that promote compassionate, collaborative care within their organization or system. I hope that recognizing these efforts will accelerate the adoption of similar or new innovative programs, making compassionate care a priority at every healthcare organization.

I am so grateful for the opportunity to help recognize your commitment to compassion, not only because you deserve it, but because we need more of it.

Sincerely,

Steve Corman

 

2021 Corman IMPACT Honorees

Grady Memorial Hospital
Atlanta, GA
Chronic Care Clinic

The Chronic Care Clinic is an integrated, collaborative initiative created to address the holistic needs of patients with over-utilization of emergency department services. The 9-12-month intervention examined social determinants of health and targeted increasing health literacy, developing self-management skills via behavioral health intervention, community resource connection and successful health system navigation along with a focus on disease-specific goals. Patients who successfully engaged and achieved at least 50% of their established goals participated in a graduation ceremony.

One patient wrote, “They helped me with my health, they helped me find a job, they helped me find a place to live. When I joined this clinic, I felt like I wasn’t lost in the world anymore.”

 

Montefiore Medical Center
New York, NY
Arts and Integrative Medicine (AIM)

Led by Founding Director Dr. Jenny Seham, AIM is a program in Montefiore Medical Center’s Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Science with initiatives in the Child Outpatient Division (COPD) and the availability for consultation, assessment, intervention, and training throughout the Montefiore Healthcare systems. AIM offers arts and integrative interventions including music, dance, photography, drawing, poetry, yoga, gardening, and technology. AIM begins with a foundation of evidence-based psychiatric practices, engages with the community with goals to create positive change in the environment of care and in the mental wellness of patients, their families and hospital staff.

One colleague noted, “…I watched these youths develop newfound confidence, improved self-esteem, and a sense of worth in a way I have never witnessed.”

 

St. Joseph’s Healthcare Hamilton
Hamilton, Ontario
Three Wishes Project

The 3 Wishes Project (3WP) was developed to bring peace to a patient’s final days and to comfort families. The goal of this end of-life program is to improve the quality of the dying experience for patients, their families and clinicians, by dignifying the patients and honoring their lives in order to ease the grief for others left behind. This is achieved in the 3WP by initiating conversations to learn more holistically about patients and their families, then eliciting and implementing wishes that are important and meaningful to them. These acts of compassion have been classified in 12 categories: facilitating connections, celebrations involving food/beverage, humanizing the patient, personalizing the ICU room, family care, music, religious rituals and spiritual ceremonies, preparations and final arrangements, word clouds, keepsakes and tributes, organ and tissue donation, and “paying it forward.”

As a daughter of a dying patient posted on Facebook an image of the card with dozens of notes from clinicians caring for her father, “This is what kindness looks like.”

 

Thank you to all the Schwartz Center healthcare members who shared their programs. Read about the 2021 Corman IMPACT Honors honorable mentions.

If you have questions regarding the Corman IMPACT Honors, please contact Angelina McCoy at amccoy@theschwartzcenter.org.