Personal Factors & Health

We offer a variety of programs aimed at everyone in the Mount Sinai Health System:

  • Mount Sinai Wellness: We offer wellness programs such as Mount Sinai Fit and Mount Sinai Calm. These personalized services offer information about nutrition, exercise, diabetes, diabetes prevention services, and primary care wellness visits.  Mount Sinai Wellness for more information.
  • Mount Sinai Calm: Our clinical social workers provide free, confidential self-care, stress management, and work-life balance consultations in person or by phone as part of our Mount Sinai Wellness program. We can help you implement personalized self-care action plans. You can use Mount Sinai’s free yoga, mindfulness, tai chi offerings as well as music to unwind. 
  • Mount Sinai Fit: Our certified registered dieticians provide Mount Sinai faculty and staff personalized nutrition counseling. Along 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 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 provide staff support programs such as Take10. To learn more, call 212-241-7262.
  • The Mount Sinai Recreation Office: Look here for 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, we provide well-being and resilience opportunities for staff, faculty, and trainees. C to make arrangements.
  • Lactation Facilities: If you are nursing, 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 resolutions in workplace and educational settings.
  • The Office of Diversity and Inclusion: We support the Mount Sinai Health System in living up to our principles of diversity and inclusion for excellence and innovation. Led by Gary Butts, MD, Dean for Diversity Programs, Policy, and Community Affairs, this office champions a diverse workforce, strives to create a multicultural environment, and fosters an inclusive setting. 
  • The Office of Gender Equity in Science and Medicine: We aim to assess and address the climate and structures within the Mount Sinai Health System. The Office looks to build community while working to address and strengthen policies and programs related to bias and mistreatment, compensation equity, recruitment, retention and promotion, leadership development, and family support. 

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, TRIP (transit/parking), and flexible spending accounts (health care/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 peer support to those who have experienced a particularly stressful work-related clinical incident. Call them 24 hours a day, 7 days a week at 212-241-8989. They will return your call.

Faculty members can participate in a variety of workshops, including:

  • Well-being and Resilience Workshops: We can help departments offer well-being workshops in narrative medicine, mindfulness, and facilitated discussion to your faculty members. We help you identify needs and provide funding for expert facilitators. For more information, fill out this request form. Upon submission, we will contact you for next steps.
  • Resilience 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. 
  • Office of Faculty Development: We provide career development services including workshops, one-on-one meetings, and collaboration initiatives. We also offer guidance and resources in mentoring, becoming leaders, and collaboration. 

Our offerings include:

 

We offer a range of programs for residents and clinical fellows, including:

  • Facilitated Discussions: Young doctors experience an enormous number of stressors, including difficult patients, death and dying, and the prospect of medical errors. A space to have a discussion about these emotional issues, guided by an expert facilitator, can provide a great outlet for processing these challenging events. It can also reduce burnout. To organize a session email GME@mssm.edu for more information.
  • Mindfulness Training: We teach mindfulness practices to help you handle the stresses of the training environment and increase your overall sense of well-being. To organize a session email GME@mssm.edu for more information.

Programs geared to graduate students and postdoctoral fellows include:

  • Mindful Meetups are a series of meetings in which postdoctoral fellows, graduate students, and a social worker gather to discuss any obstacles in their path to well-being. Our intent is to create a safe space where participants can share their thoughts and ideas while also learning about tools for de-stressing.
  • At the Mastication and Education series, students and members of the wider academic community have informal discussions about career prospects and developments, experiences inside and outside the academic setting, and how to position themselves for professional success.
  • Through the Trainee Health and Wellness Committee (THAW), PhD students, master’s students, and postdoctoral fellows work to improve training environments by implementing well-being programs and resources. THAW also includes an extensive peer-mentoring program that is open to all trainees. 
  • The Practice Enhancement, Engagement, Resilience, and Support (PEERS) Curriculum helps PhD and master’s students strengthen their resilience skills as they navigate their training and research tenures. Through a series of facilitated small-group sessions, PEERS combines empirical data with hands-on exercises to enhance mental, physical, and academic health.

Please inquire at: gradstudentaffairs@mssm.edu