MediSys Health Network in New York City is a health care service provider organization that operates Jamaica Hospital Medical Center (JHMC) and Flushing Hospital Medical Center (FHMC). For their work with the AHA Suicide in the Health Care Workforce Collaborative, MediSys chose to focus on mitigating job-related stressors for their employees. Members from JHMC and FHMC worked together to create a plan that could benefit the entire network. By forming a team, members from MediSys were able to leverage their limited financial resources as well as staff bandwidth.
The MediSys team considered many interventions for their organization when starting out with the collaborative, but as a safety net institution, cost effectiveness was a key consideration. Because of its potential for widespread impact, they ultimately chose to implement a peer support training program at both of their hospitals.
Building a peer support program from the ground up was an ambitious goal to achieve within the time allotted for the collaborative, so the team at MediSys has adjusted their approach and is working toward implementing the program step by step. They have identified the peer support program model that they want to implement, and the program is both cost-effective and robust in the services and resources it provides to the workforce. The team who is leading this implementation has completed train-the-trainer courses so they can begin to roll out the training to others within the organization. The team has also recently completed Stress First Aid training. MediSys plans to continue to build their peer support program and plans to roll out the program across their hospitals as soon as possible.
