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“Nursing is our calling, and we are especially proud to lead the nursing and patient-care departments of the Hadassah Medical Organization (HMO),” write the Hadassah Medical Organization’s Rely Alon and Orit Meridan in a powerful op-ed in eJewish Philanthropy.
The deputy director of HMO’s Division of Nursing and Health Professions and HMO’s patient and family experience manager, respectively, traveled to Maine in October to present at the Transcultural Nursing Society’s 51st annual conference, whose mission is to advance culturally sensitive nursing worldwide.
Their presentation, “Leveraging Diversity to Build Resilience: Managing Intercultural Tensions in a Multicultural Hospital During Wartime,” described how HMO maintained and strengthened its commitment to compassionate care in the aftermath of October 7, 2023.
To maintain professionalism among Hadassah hospitals’ healthcare workers and staff members, who include Jews and Arabs, the religious and the secular, new immigrants and longtime citizens, especially in a “highly charged environment,” HMO developed resilience-building workshops that help all staff members take cultural differences into account as they go about their day-to-day work.
When it comes to the care of patients of all ethnicities, religions, genders and customs, “we strive to make every patient, and every patient’s family, feel seen and heard,” write Alon and Meridan, whether it’s providing prayer rooms for different faith traditions, adapting medical protocols to the demands of religious observance or ensuring that the customs of bereaved families are respected.
“If a medical center in the heart of Israel operating in the wake of the Oct. 7 attacks and during a time of war can maintain trust among an extremely diverse group of employees, perhaps it can serve as a model for other organizations struggling to heal internal fractures so that they, too, can do the work for which they were created,” they say.
