Personal Factors & Health

Mount Sinai offers a variety of programs aimed to support everyone in the Mount Sinai Health System. These include:

  • Mount Sinai Wellness: Wellness resources are available for faculty, staff, and students as part of Mount Sinai’s Benefits package.

  • Mount Sinai Calm for Self-Care and Stress Reduction: As part of Mount Sinai’s Wellness Program, Mount Sinai Calm services and resources focus on helping faculty, students, staff, and our loved ones take better care of ourselves and lower our stress levels. Our services are free. Clinical social workers provide confidential self-care, stress management, and work-life balance consultations on Zoom or by phone to guide in designing and implementing personalized self-care action plans. To help manage stress, we offer live yoga, mindfulness, and Pilates classes via Zoom. For on-demand 24/7 stress management resources, we maintain a library of helpful videos on the Calm YouTube Playlist. 

    To support Mount Sinai’s working parents, the Mount Sinai Calm team trains volunteers (identified by the Mount Sinai Volunteer Services Department) to provide homework help and academic enrichment to school age children. We match parents and students with a Mount Sinai Calm trained volunteer tutor. The volunteer tutor provides one hour per week of free virtual tutoring, alleviating potential homework stress between parents and children. Mount Sinai's hardworking parents have the option of using this time for their own self-care. To learn details about all our services, join our mailing list, and receive our weekly class schedule, please email us at 4Calm@mountsinai.org.

  • Mount Sinai Fit: Our certified registered dieticians provide Mount Sinai faculty and staff with personalized nutrition counseling. In collaboration with Mount Sinai pharmacists and physicians, nutritionists offer coordinated diabetes management to our employees through the Diabetes Care Program and the Diabetes Alliance. As part of our Mount Sinai Wellness program, Mount Sinai Fit also offers smoking cessation assistance and exercise videos to encourage fitness. 

  • Spiritual Care and Education: We recognize and support the role that religion, spirituality, and culture may hold in your life. As spiritual care providers, chaplains provide spiritual, religious, and emotional support to people of all beliefs, religions, faiths, and cultures. We also offer staff support programs such as Take10. To learn more, call 212-241-7262.

  • The Mount Sinai Recreation Office: We offer discounts to many New York City cultural events, such as Broadway and off-Broadway shows, movies, and sporting events. You can also get reduced prices on amusement parks, restaurants, health clubs and spas, hotels, cell phone services, and car rentals. Use your Mount Sinai Health System ID to access these benefits. Call 212-241-6660 for assistance.

  • Paws & Play: In partnership with the Child Life and Creative Arts Therapy Department, creative arts therapist Robin O’Hare and facility dog Muffin support staff in adult high-acuity intensive care units and oncology settings. Ms. O’Hare facilitates regular wellness sessions using animal-assisted therapy in these areas. For more detail about Muffin and Ms. O’Hare’s work, please visit Paws and Play or contact ali.spikestein@mountsinai.org.

  • Lactation Facilities: Please visit the lactation services website to find a pod or room near you. 

  • The Ombuds Office: This confidential, independent resource is geared to students, trainees, and faculty. Led by Deborah Marin, MD, we help ensure fair and equitable conflict resolution in workplace and educational settings.

  • A Well Work-Life and Family Friendly Culture: We've designed this page to be the all-inclusive heart of our family-friendly and work-life integration benefits, policies, and resources. The purpose is to support our most important resource—you.

At the Mount Sinai Employee Benefits Office, we help you enroll or update your health insurance and other employee benefits. These benefits include medical, prescription, dental, vision, transit/parking, and flexible spending accounts for health care and dependent care. Call 646-605-4620 for more information or visit the Human Resources intranet for important benefits information.

We offer peer support services through ICARE Peer Support. This team offers help for those who have experienced a particularly stressful work-related clinical incident. Call them 24 hours a day, seven days a week at 212-241-8989 to leave a message. They will return your call.

Faculty members can participate in a variety of workshops. The Center for Stress, Resilience, and Personal Growth provides resilience workshops for faculty, students, and staff to help meet life’s challenges, big and small. 

Our offerings include: 

  • Practice Enhancement, Engagement, Resilience, and Support (PEERS): This program helps medical and graduate students, residents, and fellows develop, refine, and regularly engage in resilience skills while building community. Through a series of peer-led, guided small-group sessions, the PEERS curriculum combines empirical data with hands-on exercises to improve mental, emotional, and social well-being. Please contact Jacqueline Hargrove, PhD, PEERS Faculty Advisor, at Jacqueline.Hargrove@mountsinai.org for more information.
  • Resilience workshops: The Center for Stress, Resilience, and Personal Growth (CSRPG) provides resilience workshops for faculty, students, and staff to help you meet  life’s challenges and build on your inherent strengths. Please contact Scarlett Ho, PhD, Director of Education for CSRPG, at Scarlett.Ho@mssm.edu for more information.

 

Resources and programs developed to help graduate students and postdocs cultivate their sense of well-being through evidence-based skills and community-based support include:  

  • Trainee Health and Wellness Committee: This group helps PhD students, master’s students, and postdoctoral fellows work to improve their training environments by implementing well-being programs and resources. It also includes an extensive peer-mentoring program that is open to all trainees.
  • Practical Applications of Well-Being sessions: We offer these sessions in collaboration with student PEER leaders and the Director of Graduate Student and Postdoctoral Affairs. Practical Applications of Well-Being sessions are based on the evidence-based practice of behavioral activation. Sessions occur once per semester, and we invite students and postdocs to drop into any of the sessions offered. For more information, please contact gradstudentaffairs@mssm.edu.

Resources and programs developed to help medical students cultivate their sense of well-being through evidence-based skills and community-based support include:   

  • Medical School Advising System: This group assigns students wellness advisors, career advisors, and peer advisors/mentors to help guide students through all four years of medical school. The advisors provide distinct services:
    • Wellness advisors: These clinical social workers are available for one-on-one meetings focused on self-care, support, and resource building. They help students cope with school pressures and interpersonal or relationship issues. They can also make referrals for additional mental health or other supportive services if needed.
    • Career advisors: These practicing physicians within the Mount Sinai Health System have no role in assessment or advancement of their students. They are your first point of contact for academic, career, and professional development. You can make an appointment on Blackboard via MARC.
    • Student Peer Advisors: This group is primarily composed of fourth-year medical students who offer peer support, guidance, and mentorship. Our peer advisors also consult with wellness and career advisors to offer holistic support and best advising practices to their junior peers. 

  • IcahnBeWell: This medical student-directed student wellness program supports spiritual, emotional, physical, professional, and financial well-being of students. Throughout the years, IcahnBeWell has hosted numerous events with the goal of building community among our students. This group also regularly consults with the Director of Student Well-Being to enhance their efforts. 
  • Practical Applications of Well-Being sessions: This well-being series is part of the pre-clerkship phase of the ASCEND curriculum. These sessions use the evidence-based practice of behavioral activation. Students can choose from a menu of practical well-being activities guided by content experts and informed by the nine-dimensional model of student well-being.