Local to Global Health Care Training
New York City is a microcosm of the world’s cultures and economic strata. Almost any ethnic group you can imagine is represented here. At Mount Sinai Phillips School of Nursing, we consider it essential that we understand the cultures that our patients come from, and how it affects health care. Culture has a profound impact on our patients’ attitudes on health concerns from childbirth to mental health to aging.
Our Deep Roots in the New York Community
We have community affiliations and initiatives throughout New York City, including the Harlem Dream Academy, the Upper Manhattan Empowerment Zone, and the Eastern Community Action Council. We engage with the communities in New York at the grassroots level. For instance, we are mobilizing with our community partners in Harlem to engage with seniors through telehealth who are in high-risk households who don’t have internet. We are establishing a program called “Move In Place” in which physical and occupational therapists virtually assist seniors who are homebound.
Our Students are Citizens of the World
Through our Global Health Care Initiatives, we have relationships with schools on all seven continents. These cooperative ventures take the form of collaborative research or cultural humility programs. And while COVID-19 has limited our ability to collaborate in person, we have highly engaging virtual projects.
We have an affiliation with a nursing school in Lombardy, Italy, the region where COVID-19 first emerged in Europe. We’re comparing experiences with nurses in that region and engaging in evidence-based research because their experience closely parallels that of ours in New York City. We completed a study in collaboration with an affiliate in Taiwan to study the stress factors in nursing, as well as wellness remedies. We also have programs with schools in Belgium, Colombia, India, Malaysia, Australia, and China. These affiliations give our students insight into how nursing is practiced in other countries, and students also have the opportunity to learn non-Western modalities of healing, such as Ayurveda.