The Schwartz Center is committed to supporting healthcare professionals with additional resources on caring for their patients, themselves and their teams during challenging times. Please find mental health and wellness resources here.
U.S. News and World Report has named Cincinnati Children’s Hospital Medical Center one of the best pediatric hospitals in the U.S. for more than 15 years. Children’s has partnered with the Schwartz Center for 10 years to advance compassion for patients, care teams, and their healing relationships. Schwartz Center CEO Michael Gustafson, MD, MBA, will moderate a discussion with Anna Sheets, DNP, RN, NEA-BC, senior director of wellness, and Rachel Thienprayoon, MD, MSCS, chief clinical wellness officer. They will discuss how Schwartz Center programs have positively impacted employee well-being and patient care, detailing their implementation process, their plans for growth, and their positive outcomes. Attendees will have an opportunity to ask questions about their successes and challenges.
Please join us for a special celebration of the 2024 National Compassionate Caregivers of the Year® Award recipients. As we mark the 25th anniversary of this distinguished recognition program, we celebrate healthcare professionals whose deep commitment to compassionate care has transformed countless lives. This group of remarkable honorees works tirelessly with our most vulnerable populations, bringing dignity and healing to patients facing spinal cord injuries, substance abuse disorders, end-of-life care, and homelessness, among many other challenging scenarios. Don’t miss this panel discussion moderated by Schwartz Center Chief Executive Officer Michael Gustafson, MD, MBA, where our recipients will share their powerful stories of connection, care, and human resilience. The 2024 NCCY recipients are:
• Erik Garcia, MD, Physician, University of Massachusetts Medical Center
• Sylvia K. Parker, NP, Nurse Practitioner, Optum
• Dinh H. To, MSW, LSW, Worker’s Compensation Care Manager, Shirley Ryan AbilityLab
We hosted an engaging panel discussion featuring the 2024 Corman IMPACT Honors recipients to learn about their innovative programs that provide compassionate care to vulnerable populations and create safe spaces for patients and care teams alike. This year’s recipients are the Jefferson Addiction Multidisciplinary Service, which improves healthcare for people with substance use disorders and the people who care for them, and the Children’s Minnesota Gender Health Program, a multidisciplinary and comprehensive program that partners with transgender and gender-diverse youth and their families. Schwartz Center Chief Medical Officer Dr. Beth Lown facilitated a conversation with representatives from both programs, exploring their impact on patients, families, and their communities.
Artificial intelligence (AI) is here and evolving quickly. Join us for a presentation and discussion of the opportunities, promises and challenges of AI hosted by Schwartz Center Chief Medical Officer Beth Lown, MD, moderated by Karl Swanson, MD, co-founder and head of data science at Quench, and panelists Michael Lesh, MD, CEO and founder of Quench, Ashwin Nayak, MD, MS, clinical assistant professor of medicine at Stanford University, and Vivek Rudrapatna, MD, PhD, gastroenterologist and assistant professor at University of California, San Francisco. Our panelists will describe how AI is being used in healthcare now, and what we can expect in the near future and long-term. We’ll discuss how this may affect compassionate patient care and healthcare workforce well-being, and what we can do collectively to shape this future. The discussion will follow with Q&A.
Join us for a fireside chat with Stephen W. Trzeciak, MD, MPH, and Schwartz Center Chief Medical Officer Dr. Beth Lown. Dr. Trzeciak is chairman and chief of the department of medicine and medical director of the Adult Health Institute at Cooper University Health Care. He is also a professor of medicine at Cooper Medical School of Rowan University. Drs. Lown and Trzeciak will discuss how we create and, conversely, can erode compassionate cultures and how to demonstrate empowered compassion for ourselves and others. You will also learn about research that highlights the benefits of compassion, including its positive impact on patients, healthcare workers, and organizational culture and profitability.
For decades, interventions for clinician distress have been less effective than hoped. By expanding our understanding of the clinicians’ experience to include moral injury, we can create organizations with thriving practitioners who can offer better care for their patients. Join us for this special webinar, hosted by Schwartz Center Chief Medical Officer Dr. Beth Lown, as we learn from Dr. Wendy Dean, CEO and co-founder of The Moral Injury of Healthcare. Dr. Dean is the author of “If I Betray These Words: Moral Injury In Medicine” and “Why It’s So Hard For Clinicians to Put Patients First,” and cohost of the “Moral Matters” and “43cc” podcasts. This conversation will be followed by Q&A.
Healthcare faces an existential crisis, which started before the COVID epidemic. The shift towards greater efficiency, productivity and profitability, combined with increasing pressures from payors, has created a gap between the moral foundation guiding the healing professions and the realities of academic, health and healing work.
There is a movement to reimagine organizational practices and culture as more equitable, compassionate, and collaborative. Join us for this webinar with Ken Epstein, PhD, LCSW, moderated by Schwartz Center Chief Medical Officer Dr. Beth Lown. Ken works as a consultant helping individuals, couples, families, communities and organizations repair, heal and promote collaborative culture change and has practiced, taught and supervised for close to three decades. He will review the context of organizational culture, the importance of reflective practice, and the necessity of measuring our capacity to be a healing organization for the people who work in it, as well as the community we serve.
Please join us for a special celebration of the 2023 National Compassionate Caregivers of the Year®. This year marks the 24th anniversary of this distinguished award, a national recognition program that celebrates healthcare professionals who exemplify extraordinary compassion in caring for patients and families. We invite you to meet this year’s National Compassionate Caregivers of the Year, and to listen as they share personal stories of giving, receiving, and making possible compassionate patient and family care during an intimate panel discussion moderated by Schwartz Center Chief Medical Officer Dr. Beth Lown.
The 2023 National Compassion Caregivers of the Year are:
Thank you to presenting sponsor CRICO for supporting the NCCY Award.
Challenging work conditions, exacerbated by the COVID-19 pandemic and its aftermath put millions of health workers at risk for severe stress, burnout, depression, anxiety, substance use disorders, and suicidal behavior. Mental health stigma and fear of the impact of required treatment disclosure on licensure and credentialing inhibit health workers from getting the help they need. However, more is now known about suicide risk and prevention, and practical mental health support and risk reduction strategies are available.
In this webinar hosted by Schwartz Center Chief Medical Officer Dr. Beth Lown, Judy Davidson, DNP, RN, MCCM, FAAN, nurse scientist at University of California San Diego Health and research scientist for the UC San Diego School of Medicine Department of Psychiatry, Jennifer Mensik Kennedy, PhD, MBA, RN, NEA-BC, FAAN, president of American Nurses Association, and Christine Yu Moutier, MD, chief medical officer of the American Foundation for Suicide Prevention will discuss the current status of health worker mental health, what we know about suicide risk factors, how to approach a colleague at risk, and practical strategies, programs and toolkits you can implement in your organization.