Thursday, October 1, 2026
Health care leaders at Long Island Jewish Valley Stream hospital stressed that caregivers are often in need of care themselves, encouraging more open conversations about mental health for the professionals who spend their careers helping others.
For nurses, physicians and other healthcare workers, who are essential players in their patients’ care, the job often means supporting patients and families through illness, trauma, grief and loss. While those experiences are part of the profession, healthcare leaders agreed that the emotional impact on caregivers has not always received the same attention.
Renee Sanchez, the hospital’s director of patient care services, Magnet program and nursing quality, began therapy while serving as a nurse manager during the coronavirus pandemic.
“I continue because I think it’s really important when you’re dealing with being on stage constantly, and people look up to you,” Sanchez said. “They seek your advice, your guidance, your mentorship, your leadership. You also have to be really present with yourself and understanding your reactions because, as a leader, you impact the whole group and the culture. The big thing is, taking care of yourself first before you take care of others.”
Healthcare professionals often enter the field because they want to help others, which can lead them to overlook their own needs. Hospitals operate around the clock, requiring employees to work holidays and weekends and to tackle emergencies while regularly caring for people during some of the most difficult moments of their lives.
For Sanchez, prioritizing her own well-being through therapy, along with exercise and other healthy routines, has strengthened her ability to lead her team and support patients. Sanchez also said leaders can help reduce stigma by creating psychologically safe workplaces where employees feel comfortable discussing challenges and seeking available resources.
During the pandemic, Sanchez turned to Northwell Health’s Center for Traumatic Stress, Resilience and Recovery, or CTSRR, for support before later continuing therapy with a private therapist. Having access to resources and encouragement from another leader helped her take that first step.
Dr. Salvatore Pardo, the hospital’s chair of emergency medicine, said emergency medicine combines the demands of a fast-paced clinical environment with repeated exposure to grief, serious illness and death.
“You’re supposed to be immune to this type of humanity, and kind of supposed to deal with it, move on,” Pardo said. “You’re not supposed to show any effect because you’re a professional, right? But at the end of the day, you do regardless of how you appear.”
Pardo began therapy about 11 years ago following a personal event. After initially using an employee assistance program, he continued meeting with a psychotherapist and now considers therapy part of maintaining his overall well-being rather than something reserved only for times of crisis.
He said leadership can sometimes feel isolated because managers cannot always share their concerns with those they supervise. Therapy has provided Pardo with a place to work through the pressures associated with leadership and has helped him better manage the emotional demands of the profession.
One of the biggest challenges remains the stigma surrounding mental health.
“I think mental health is kind of like a secret,” Pardo said. “It shouldn’t be a secret.”
Dr. Rebecca Schwartz is the director of research and evaluation for the CTSRR, which is one of those groups supporting those efforts to improve mental health.
Schwartz also serves as director of the Division of Trauma and Resilience Research at the Feinstein Institutes for Medical Research’s Institute of Behavioral Science, and an associate professor in the departments of occupational medicine, epidemiology and prevention and psychiatry at the Zucker School of Medicine at Hofstra/Northwell.
She added that the CTSRR provides clinical services, resilience coaching, crisis response and workplace well-being programs designed to help healthcare workers recognize stress and connect with available support.
One of the center’s largest initiatives is Stress First Aid, a peer-support model originally developed for the U.S. military. The program trains employees to recognize signs of stress in themselves and their colleagues, understand available well-being resources and connect coworkers with appropriate support before problems escalate.
Nearly 37,000 Northwell employees have completed Stress First Aid training. Research published in the Journal of Occupational and Environmental Medicine followed nearly 3,000 healthcare workers over 12 months and found participants reported greater confidence in recognizing stress in coworkers, increased awareness and use of well-being resources, and reductions in stress and burnout.
The health system has also introduced Stress First Aid Connect, a Microsoft Teams platform available to Northwell employees that provides well-being information, interactive resources and guidance based on users’ reported stress levels.
“(Healthcare workers) are so focused on caring for others, and as a result, (prioritizing their own mental health) could really get lost,” Schwartz said. “I think we saw that a lot, particularly during the height of the Covid-19 pandemic. There was really a stoicism, I think, about physicians, nurses, all healthcare workers that you see in lots of sort of frontline professions, and I think as a result, sometimes their own needs are put on the backburner.”
Healthcare systems should routinely assess employee well-being, ensure workers know how to access available resources and allow time for them to use those services, according to Schwartz. Regular surveys can help identify departments experiencing higher levels of burnout so leaders can better understand the causes and respond with targeted support.
For Sanchez and Pardo, sharing their own experiences is part of that effort. Seeking mental health support, they agreed, has made them stronger leaders and better equipped to care for the people who desperately depend on them every day.
