Northwell launches new Neurodiversity Virtual Mentorship Program
Students and Internships
At Northwell Health, we are committed to creating a workforce that is as diverse and inclusive as the communities we serve. As part of our continued advocation for individuals with disabilities, we are proud to launch a new Neurodiversity Virtual Mentorship Program for college students.
The Virtual Neurodiverse Mentoring Program, created by the Workforce Readiness Inclusion team in partnership with the Bridges to Adelphi program, provides neurodiverse college students with an opportunity to engage with Northwell leaders across the organization in different disciplines. As part of the semester-long program, the six student participants gained firsthand insight into a career within the healthcare industry as well as a better understanding of how to support our neurodiverse population within the workplace.
The knowledge and experience the students gained will be invaluable as they begin to start their career journeys after college graduation. Beyond just meeting virtually throughout the semester to gain career insight and ask advice, students were given projects to work on to develop their skills across different healthcare disciplines and areas of interest.
The program was a success with students taking full advantage of this unique opportunity to connect with Northwell leadership. “Thanks to my mentor, Patricia Ricciardi, I gained experience in a new field, met several people working in that field and learned a lot about the retirement process,” says Anitra Marley, a participant in the program. “The Northwell Mentorship Program was a valuable experience and I am honored to have been selected.”
“I found the mentorship program to be very informative and engaging in terms of helping us to prepare for a career,” agrees Laura Madtes, another student participant in the program. “My mentor, Ariel Hayes, was very helpful and kind, and she introduced me to a lot of people who offered great advice for advancing my writing and work skills. I also feel that Ms. Hayes has helped me to improve my communication skills and I’m very grateful.”
“I was able to build a personal connection to my mentor, Jon Frascati, and even had the opportunity to make news banners for the Northwell website. I never thought before I would get the chance to have something I made be put on a website,” says student participant Steven Caminero. “Overall the mentorship program is a great experience and allows both mentor and mentee to learn from each other and to work together.”
And it wasn’t just the mentees who benefitted from this program but the mentors as well. “Participating in the Neurodiversity Mentorship program was such an amazing experience and one which I will cherish for many years to come,” says Joseph Moscola, PA, senior vice president and Northwell’s chief people officer. “These students are so incredible that at times I was unsure who was who was getting more out of the conversations, the mentor or the mentee.”
“It has been an absolute honor and privilege to serve as a neurodiversity program mentor. These students are truly extraordinary,” says Joseph Schulman, senior vice president, Population Health Business Transformation. “Throughout the program they’ve shown how incredibly talented, hardworking and ambitious they are and I’m excited to hear about their many successes going forward as they begin their careers.”
At the end of the program, all mentors and mentees shared their experiences in a virtual meeting to highlight the projects they worked on throughout the mentorship program and to celebrate their work throughout the program.
Develop cutting-edge applications in Software Engineering Internship
Picture: Purna Prasad, Chief Technology Officer and Vice President of Northwell Health, comes to visit and gets a demo from one of the teams.
Students and Internships
Do you have an insatiable curiosity for new ideas and building innovative software? Then you might be Made for Northwell Health’s Software Engineering Internship!
This year Northwell launched a new Software Engineering Internship where our interns worked at the forefront of building new technology for healthcare as part of the Northwell Health Information Technology Innovation Center. With over 400 applicants, five top candidates with varied skill sets were selected to form our first elite summer cohort.
Our summer interns had the opportunity use the latest technologies to build advanced modern software that will deliver real value to our patients, clinicians and organization. Operating like a startup, the team incubated new ideas and worked collaboratively in an agile environment like a commercial software development team.
Joining the team of software engineers, product managers and UX designers, our interns are bringing new ideas to life with the goal of having a pilot-ready software for deployment at our hospitals at the end of their internship. Each intern was mentored by a software engineer to ensure their success throughout the summer.
During their first week, interns attended a Coding Boot Camp, followed by the kick-off of two full stack projects. After presentations from stakeholders outlining important requirements, the interns were off and running in two small teams creating architecture to review with their mentors, running daily stand-up meetings and presenting to stakeholders for feedback.
While delivering projects, students learned about cutting edge technologies and work with the latest development methodologies and frameworks, including self-organizing to create their own development boards and run their own Scrum stand-ups. “The working environment is great,” says Xuliang Sun, a dual Masters student at Carnegie Mellon studying Civil Engineering and Technology Innovation Management. “We work in an open space and our mentors are there to help us. We can easily jump into the huddle room and whiteboard the solution together.”
Nic Lorenzen, senior development lead for the Innovation Software Engineering team believes in giving interns the opportunity to push their comfort zone. He adds, “By the end of summer, they will have created continuous deployment pipelines that push out Microsoft Azure function microservice backends, progressive reactive front end applications and leveraged SignalR for real-time communication. Our interns won’t just ship code like every intern yearns to do; they will ship clean, maintainable code that they can be proud of and we can use and build off of for years to come.”
Ready to gain experience for your future career? Applications are now open!
Let’s hear what our interns have to say about their summer so far:
“I think it’s important to feel like you’re part of the actual team during an internship. I feel like if we were to start working here tomorrow full-time, not much would change since we are already so involved.”
Abrar Ahmed
“I think it’s important to feel like you’re part of the actual team during an internship. I feel like if we were to start working here tomorrow full-time, not much would change since we are already so involved.”
Abrar Ahmed
“We’ve discussed ideas with executives throughout Northwell, networked with top technology companies and gained real full stack software engineering skills, all while enjoying the view of the Chrysler building from our New York City office. It feels less like an internship and more like a partnership, innovating to build better solutions for healthcare.”
Fahad Hossain
Senior, CUNY Queens College
“I learned a lot from the first week Coding Boot Camp and as a team we benefit a lot from the weekly stakeholder meetings where we get direct feedback from users and create our own plan for the next iteration of features.”
Xuliang Sun
Dual Masters Student, Carnegie Mellon
“Interning with the Innovation Center at Northwell Health has been an eye opening experience. I had the opportunity to work together with a wide range of individuals, ranging from software engineers to doctors and nurses to innovate and solve some of the most pressing healthcare issues impacting patient care. Since day one of the internship, I’ve had the opportunity to drive a project on my own that solves real world problems and which I developed using cutting-edge technologies. I am learning a lot and feel like my project matters.”
Joshua Zeitlinger
Junior, Stephens Institute of Technology
“This internship did a great job in giving us a big picture view of healthcare and the future trends in healthcare technology. In a few weeks, I’m shadowing a clinician on rounds at Cohen’s Children’s Medical Center and can’t wait to see how the technologies we have been working on can be incorporated right into the clinicians workflow.”
Cindy Zhang
Senior, University of Maryland College Park
“I think it’s important to feel like you’re part of the actual team during an internship. I feel like if we were to start working here tomorrow full-time, not much would change since we are already so involved.”
Abrar Ahmed
“We’ve discussed ideas with executives throughout Northwell, networked with top technology companies and gained real full stack software engineering skills, all while enjoying the view of the Chrysler building from our New York City office. It feels less like an internship and more like a partnership, innovating to build better solutions for healthcare.”
Fahad Hossain
Senior, CUNY Queens College
“I learned a lot from the first week Coding Boot Camp and as a team we benefit a lot from the weekly stakeholder meetings where we get direct feedback from users and create our own plan for the next iteration of features.”
Xuliang Sun
Dual Masters Student, Carnegie Mellon
“Interning with the Innovation Center at Northwell Health has been an eye opening experience. I had the opportunity to work together with a wide range of individuals, ranging from software engineers to doctors and nurses to innovate and solve some of the most pressing healthcare issues impacting patient care. Since day one of the internship, I’ve had the opportunity to drive a project on my own that solves real world problems and which I developed using cutting-edge technologies. I am learning a lot and feel like my project matters.”
Joshua Zeitlinger
Junior, Stephens Institute of Technology
“This internship did a great job in giving us a big picture view of healthcare and the future trends in healthcare technology. In a few weeks, I’m shadowing a clinician on rounds at Cohen’s Children’s Medical Center and can’t wait to see how the technologies we have been working on can be incorporated right into the clinicians workflow.”
Cindy Zhang
Senior, University of Maryland College Park
“I think it’s important to feel like you’re part of the actual team during an internship. I feel like if we were to start working here tomorrow full-time, not much would change since we are already so involved.”
Abrar Ahmed
“I think it’s important to feel like you’re part of the actual team during an internship. I feel like if we were to start working here tomorrow full-time, not much would change since we are already so involved.”
Abrar Ahmed
“We’ve discussed ideas with executives throughout Northwell, networked with top technology companies and gained real full stack software engineering skills, all while enjoying the view of the Chrysler building from our New York City office. It feels less like an internship and more like a partnership, innovating to build better solutions for healthcare.”
Fahad Hossain
Senior, CUNY Queens College
“I learned a lot from the first week Coding Boot Camp and as a team we benefit a lot from the weekly stakeholder meetings where we get direct feedback from users and create our own plan for the next iteration of features.”
Xuliang Sun
Dual Masters Student, Carnegie Mellon
“Interning with the Innovation Center at Northwell Health has been an eye opening experience. I had the opportunity to work together with a wide range of individuals, ranging from software engineers to doctors and nurses to innovate and solve some of the most pressing healthcare issues impacting patient care. Since day one of the internship, I’ve had the opportunity to drive a project on my own that solves real world problems and which I developed using cutting-edge technologies. I am learning a lot and feel like my project matters.”
Joshua Zeitlinger
Junior, Stephens Institute of Technology
“This internship did a great job in giving us a big picture view of healthcare and the future trends in healthcare technology. In a few weeks, I’m shadowing a clinician on rounds at Cohen’s Children’s Medical Center and can’t wait to see how the technologies we have been working on can be incorporated right into the clinicians workflow.”
Cindy Zhang
Senior, University of Maryland College Park
“I think it’s important to feel like you’re part of the actual team during an internship. I feel like if we were to start working here tomorrow full-time, not much would change since we are already so involved.”
Abrar Ahmed
“We’ve discussed ideas with executives throughout Northwell, networked with top technology companies and gained real full stack software engineering skills, all while enjoying the view of the Chrysler building from our New York City office. It feels less like an internship and more like a partnership, innovating to build better solutions for healthcare.”
Fahad Hossain
Senior, CUNY Queens College
“I learned a lot from the first week Coding Boot Camp and as a team we benefit a lot from the weekly stakeholder meetings where we get direct feedback from users and create our own plan for the next iteration of features.”
Xuliang Sun
Dual Masters Student, Carnegie Mellon
“Interning with the Innovation Center at Northwell Health has been an eye opening experience. I had the opportunity to work together with a wide range of individuals, ranging from software engineers to doctors and nurses to innovate and solve some of the most pressing healthcare issues impacting patient care. Since day one of the internship, I’ve had the opportunity to drive a project on my own that solves real world problems and which I developed using cutting-edge technologies. I am learning a lot and feel like my project matters.”
Joshua Zeitlinger
Junior, Stephens Institute of Technology
“This internship did a great job in giving us a big picture view of healthcare and the future trends in healthcare technology. In a few weeks, I’m shadowing a clinician on rounds at Cohen’s Children’s Medical Center and can’t wait to see how the technologies we have been working on can be incorporated right into the clinicians workflow.”
Cindy Zhang
Senior, University of Maryland College Park
“I think it’s important to feel like you’re part of the actual team during an internship. I feel like if we were to start working here tomorrow full-time, not much would change since we are already so involved.”
Abrar Ahmed
My experience as a Healthcare Management Program Summer Associate in the Imaging Service Line.
Photo: Lindsey is on the right.
Students and Internships
Written by: Lindsey Feuerzeig, Binghamton University, HMP Summer Assocaite 2019
Healthcare has been an industry that has peaked my interest for most of my life. When I was 10 years old, I went to Huntington Hospital with stomach pains. A few hours later I was transferred by ambulance to Cohen Children’s Medical Center and the next morning I had an emergency appendectomy.
Fast forward to college, I arrived freshman year as a Biomedical Engineering major with a dream to work in stem cell research. Chemistry did not go too well and I switched to my current major, Industrial, and Systems Engineering (ISE), focusing on the optimization of complex processes, systems, and organizations. This major is typically highly focused in manufacturing; however, there has been a recent focus in healthcare as well.
In January 2019, I accepted an internship offer in the Healthcare Management Program (HMP). I later found out that I was placed in the Imaging Service Line, and was interested to see what exactly that meant. The Imaging Service Line provides critical services such as X-Ray, MRI, CAT scan, Mammography, etc. During the course of the internship, I was enthralled with all activities regarding Northwell’s imaging services.
During my internship, I attended outpatient site visits, learned about the clinical aspect of imaging, and most importantly listened, and brought insight back to our leadership team. I worked on volume reports for each facility, as well as equipment reports. I also worked on a major inpatient project at North Shore University Hospital, The MRI Assessment Project. The project detailed data behind the outpatient volume of the hospital including procedure type, referring doctors, and patient demographics. The second part of the project included creating a detailed workflow of the inpatient process and identifying associated bottlenecks. After my completion of the assessment, I reported out at a final presentation to various hospital executives. My project will continue to be executed by my preceptors as my internship has now come to a close.
Reflecting back on my experience this summer, I could not have wished for a better program. The HMP has helped me grow both my technical and soft skills. I was encouraged to step outside my comfort zone throughout all my projects and meet with various stakeholders for their input. As a summer associate at Northwell Health, I was treated as a fellow employee and expected to deliver results to my assigned projects.
I’d like to say thank you to Northwell for offering a robust Healthcare Management Program and I look forward to applying all I’ve learned to my future career in healthcare management.
Update: Lindsey has been offered and accepted a full-time position in the Management Associate Program as an Associate at LIJ Medical Center once she graduates from Binghamton Unviersity May.
Submit your resume to become a Summer Associate in the 2020 Healthcare Management Program Internship!
5 STEM healthcare careers for students to explore
Students and Internships
The need for students to pursue STEM (science, technology, engineering, and math) careers is greater than ever and for good reason. Between 2000 and 2010, STEM-related jobs grew three times as fast as non-STEM jobs – a rate projected to increase.
You may be left wondering what STEM jobs you can pursue. STEM careers go beyond just being a doctor or an engineer – the opportunities are endless! So what are some of the major STEM careers you should be exploring?
1. Imaging
Imaging technologists are Allied Health professionals that complete a two or four year program from accredited college. Graduates are licensed by the NYS Department Of Health or registered or certified in a sub-specialty area to perform diagnostic imaging examinations. Using the most advanced imaging equipment, imaging professionals are trained to produce high-quality images that enable the Radiologist (physician) to make a critical diagnosis. Without their expertise, care teams wouldn’t be able to diagnose and treat patients effectively.
You can enjoy the flexibility to choose additional specializations such as computed tomography (CT), ultrasound, nuclear medicine, mammography and more. And as an imaging professional, you’d have the ability to work in a variety of settings such as hospitals, diagnostic labs, and ambulatory centers.
Careers to consider:
- Ultrasound Technologist
- Radiology Technologist
- CT/MRI Technologist
- Mammography Technologist
- Nuclear Medicine Technologist
- Special Procedures Technologist
2. Certified Surgical Technologist
Surgical technologists have the important task of prepping patients for surgery and ensuring the operating room’s equipment has been sterilized and properly stocked with supplies. Your job as a surgical technologist doesn’t end there – you’d remain in the OR to assist surgeons throughout the surgery and then help to dress wounds. At Northwell, Registered Nurses and the Certified Surgical Technologist function as a subunit within a team, interacting through a unique, dynamic relationship—one sterile role and one nonsterile role, working in collaboration.
Job opportunities for surgical technologists are on the rise as the growth in population and technology leads to an increase in the frequency of surgical procedures. Completing a surgical technologist certification program usually takes around two years, allowing you the unique chance to quickly scrub into your first surgery after school.
3. Research
Becoming a doctor or nurse isn’t the only option for science majors to join the healthcare industry! Research careers enable professionals to work in programs and partnerships that help study, test and improve clinical breakthroughs. Medical research also includes working on some of the most exciting technology to treat disease and injury, such as bioelectronic medicine. Not all research careers are clinical either – as a medical researcher you can work in engineering, statistics, and more.
Join together research and technology as part of a team working on cutting-edge discoveries in areas such as health outcomes research, translational science, behavioral science and more. As a member of the research team, you’d also have the ability to work on breakthroughs in major diseases from cancer to lupus to sepsis. Your work could help discover new treatments, therapies and technologies for patients to live a healthier life.
Careers to consider:
- Associate Research Statistician
- Post Doc Research Trainees
- Investigator
- Research Coordinator
- Electrical Engineer
- Computer Scientists
- Neurophysiologists
4. Telemetry Technicians
Telemetry technicians, also called monitoring technicians or electrocardiograph technicians (EKG or ECG), are important allied health professionals. These technicians use non-invasive electrocardiographic equipment to monitor patients’ heart rhythms and alert nurses and physicians to changes in the patient’s rate, rhythm and the occurrence of dysrhythmias while on the Telemetry Unit.
Working as a telemetry technician allows you to work within a hospital using advanced technology. There are also increasing opportunities for you to deliver compassionate care to patients within a hospital or ambulatory setting. And training programs prepare you for entering the healthcare industry in just a few months!
5. Clinical Laboratory Scientist
To become a clinical laboratory scientist you must obtain your bachelor’s degree from an accredited clinical laboratory science program, pass your ASCP national certification exam and then become licensed by New York State Education Department (NYSED) to practice. As a clinical laboratory scientist, you can work in exciting fields such as:
- Microbiology
- Hematology
- Cytogenetics
- Chemistry
- Molecular Diagnostics
- Blood Bank
- Immunology
- Flow Cytometry
Fun fact, Northwell has two brand new, state-of-the-art labs. Our Core Lab/Automated Lab is the largest health system-based lab in the region with the largest Roche automated line of its kind in North America, and one of the largest in the world. Our new Microbiology Lab that has the largest Kiestra Micro automated line in the U.S!
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