| Sept. 15, 2020 Edition 59 |
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Over the next five weeks, we are pleased to share with you video messages from some familiar personalities expressing their heartfelt gratitude for you and your work.
As we continue navigating the COVID-19 pandemic, associate flu shot delivery may look a little different this year. Be sure to get your annual influenza vaccine to help defend against seasonal flu, protecting your whole health and the health of those around you.
Preventative care is a vital part of your whole health. Schedule your yearly preventative exam today to enhance your wellbeing and ensure you receive your full reward through our new associate wellbeing program, Inspire Wellbeing.
Each year, we look forward to hosting our annual Fall Festival to show our appreciation for your incredible commitment to our healing ministry. With help from our annual Fall Festival partner Miller Farms and the Mineral Connect committee, we are bringing a Farmer’s Market Pick-up to you, ensuring we socially distance and mask up.
Corporate Chaplain Tom Stella and Mark Stoddart, Vice President of Ministry Formation & Workplace Spirituality, will lead a 10-minute service today at 10 a.m. All Mineral, Havana and Holly office associates may click 
As we continue to advance the work of Centura’s HRO Journey, join us as we observe World Patient Safety Day Thursday, Sept. 17.
Moving forward, all associates who seek award money will need to reach out to contacts in Corporate Responsibility, Legal and Treasury regarding the process and use of information.
PRNs and their immediate family members are now eligible for services provided by our Employee Assistance Program.
Whether you’re working on the front lines of COVID-19, are worried about current events or just have a lot on your plate, your workplace assistance administrator offers resources to support your journey. View this series’ final video, Creative calming, to learn more.
A Centura Behavioral Health Consultant and professional counselor shares the personal experience that inspired her passion for destigmatizing suicide, and dispels three common myths.
Today is the last day to apply for a scholarship up to $22,500 to Walden University.
Information Technology will perform monthly maintenance today starting at noon. Click below to see which applications will be affected and the workarounds to use, if applicable.
Sissel Jacob is named Vice President of Operations at St. Anthony North Health Campus, and Petra Olsen is promoted to Vice President of IT Applications.
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| © 2020 Centura Health. All Rights Reserved. Proprietary and Confidential - for internal distribution only. |
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| President and CEO, Peter D. Banko |
| All associates must submit proof of flu vaccination or an approved religious or medical exemption by Sunday, Nov. 15. Receiving a flu shot or submitting an approved exemption is a condition of employment. |
It’s important to know that Code You accounts do not carry over to the new Inspire Wellbeing platform. To participate in Inspire Wellbeing, you will need to complete a simple, one-time registration.
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During the COVID-19 pandemic, we have had to forego many of the activities and traditions that have weaved the fabric of our lives both personally and professionally.
One such sacrifice this year is the Fall Festival for Enterprise and Corporate Service Center associates, held annually to show Centura Health’s appreciation for the incredible work our caregivers do to contribute to our mission of building whole person care and flourishing communities. Although we may not be able to hold the event in a traditional fashion, we admire and celebrate your fortitude in the face of this year’s adversity.
With assistance from our festival partner Miller Farms and the Mineral Connect committee, we will host a Farmer’s Market Pick-up at the Enterprise office, 9100 East Mineral Circle, on Thursday, October 1 from 9 a.m. to 1 p.m. This event, open to all our Mineral, Havana and Holly associates, will feature a bag of fresh vegetables – including roasted chiles and a small pumpkin – handed out to each associate who drives or walks up (wearing a mask) to the front of the building.
The Farmer’s Market has been a popular attraction in previous Fall Festivals; we hope this demonstration of our ongoing gratitude will make your day – and dinner plate – a little more festive!
To keep the event organized, we have established pick-up times based alphabetically on associates’ last names:
World Patient Safety Day is a time to Unite for Safe Care – patients, advocates, health workers and leaders – together globally, will continue to work to ensure patient and health worker safety in every nation on earth.
As we celebrate World Patient Safety Day, we pause to reflect and share the amazing work Centura Health has done so far along our HRO journey as we work tirelessly to reduce patient and associate harm. The core principles that guide the Patient Safety Movement Foundation and drive World Patient Safety Day — safety, transparency, equity, and communication — could not be more important to everyone right now.
Sharing the same key principles of reducing harm to patients and associates, World Patient Safety Day brings to focus all we’re working for, including refining and optimizing our HRO Universal Skills to use them consistently in the work we do. We’re uniting in the stand to bring public awareness to patient and health worker safety and are working to bring this important topic to the public focus. While we’ve always had an emphasis on patient safety and have been working to bring this to the forefront across our continuum of care, now is the time to share our work more publicly and amplify this work across our communities.
Click here for key facts about World Patient Safety Day and why it’s important to speak up for safety.
Whenever a company wants to be eligible to seek grants or other types of contracts from the federal government, it must first register to receive an assigned DUNS number. A DUNS number is a unique nine-digit number that the government uses to identify organizations and access information about them for purposes of granting money. In addition, companies are required to be registered on the SAM.gov website in order to do business with the federal government.
Effective immediately, DUNS numbers for all our legal entities are centrally managed by a cross-departmental team from the Corporate Responsibility, Legal and Treasury departments. We recently reviewed our nearly 50 DUNS numbers and did some consolidating, paring them down to 12. In addition to a handful of individual facilities, we have retained DUNS numbers for:
Creative calming
September is National Suicide Prevention Month, a chance to understand, to learn, and to possibly one day even help prevent someone you know from taking his or her life.
After all, our Centura Health mission to extend the healing ministry of Christ includes not just body and spirit, but a focus on the mind as well. Behavioral Health, which includes suicide prevention, is a key part of that mission.
In the article below, Tara Swain, a Centura Behavioral Health Consultant and professional counselor, shares the personal experience that inspired her passion for destigmatizing suicide, and dispels three common myths.
Inspired to help
In 2012, I was vacationing in Las Vegas with my family. Like many tourists, we were excited to visit the Hoover Dam. Upon approaching the parking structure, we heard a cacophony of emergency sirens. As they grew louder, a feeling of dread washed over my body.
My initial thought: “Someone has jumped off the Hoover Dam.” As we exited the parking structure, my hand tightly gripping my four-year-old’s, I reluctantly made my way to the overlook. My suspicions were confirmed. Someone had in fact jumped only minutes before our arrival, their lifeless body covered by a yellow tarp.
I made sure to shield my son from any chance he could discover what had occurred. It was difficult to control my emotions. I felt a strong urge to cry despite not knowing the person who had just minutes before died from suicide. I wanted to know why. Why had this person wanted to die? How had they been able to summon the courage to jump? If I would have gotten there a few minutes before would I have been able to “talk him down?”
Of course, these are questions that can never be answered. They’re the same questions that loved ones are left to agonize over after the loss of someone to suicide.
Myth 1: Suicide is an “easy” way out
You may have noticed and even paused at my use of the word “courage.” This brings me to the first myth of suicide I would like to dispel: the myth that suicide is an act of cowardice and an “easy out.”
According to the World Health Organization, suicide accounted for 1.4% of all deaths worldwide, making it the 18th leading cause of death in 2016. Despite the far reach of suicide, it is a taboo subject for most. From Dr. Thomas Joiner’s book, Myths About Suicide, there is much we can learn about one of the most shamed of human behaviors.
Dr. Joiner points out many cases to support his argument that suicide is not easy and one has to cross the threshold of fearlessness in order to attempt a suicidal act. He points out that for every death by suicide there are 20 attempts. It seems if suicide were “easy” this ratio would be much lower.
He also discusses the need for habituation to pain and has studied various groups of people who are exposed to high levels of pain, such as long-distance cyclers. Of the approximately 60 Tour De France winners, three have died from suicide and a fourth is speculated to have as well. Although this may seem to be a small number of people, it is several hundred times the rate people die of suicide in the United States (about 10 per every 100,000).
Long distance cycling has a reputation for being one of the most painful of sports due to crashes and the agonizing training. These athletes could hardly be described as “cowards” and yet there appears to be a connection between suicide and Tour De France winners.
Myth 2: Suicide is “selfish”
A second myth that I have encountered numerous times is the idea that suicide is “selfish.” Of course, it is impossible to know exactly what is going on in the mind of an individual that has died from suicide, but suicidal individuals who have not died can inform us of their thinking at the time.
According to Dr. Joiner, there are two psychological states that must exist for someone to strongly consider suicide. These states include feeling as if they are a burden to others and experiencing a loss of belongingness. Suicidal individuals perceive their deaths as something positive as they are unburdening their loves ones by ending their lives. Although misguided in their thinking, this perception is highly incongruent with “selfish” behavior.
Myth 3: A suicidal person can’t be stopped
The third myth and perhaps the most important is the myth that once someone has decided to kill themselves, they cannot be stopped. This myth can be challenged by one study found upwards of 95% percent of those who were saved from an attempt to jump off the Golden Gate Bridge were either still alive or had died of natural causes at the time a study was conducted on the subject by Richard Seiden.
This study supports the idea that if intervention occurs prior to a suicidal act, a large majority of people will not die by suicide later. My professional experiences with suicidal individuals would also support this theory. By and large when a suicidal individual can speak with someone about their thoughts and feelings to die, there is an overwhelming sense of relief, not an increased desire to die.
And there is absolutely no research that would support that asking someone if they have thought about suicide will somehow increase their risk. All suicidal individuals have some level of ambivalence regarding suicide until the suicidal act occurs. This is positive news as it provides the opportunity for intervention and supports the notion that suicide is preventable.
A Deepening Understanding
The World Health Organization estimates that someone dies from suicide every 40 seconds. That means that in the time it took me to write this, approximately 180 people ended their lives. It is my hope that in reading this article you will have a deeper understanding and increased compassion for suicidal individuals and the loved ones that are left behind.
If we are to impact the growing rates of suicide in the United States and around the world, we must have the courage to have these conversations with family, friends, coworkers and neighbors. And we must approach these conversations with a heart full of compassion, not judgement.
Although I did not know the gentleman who died that day at the Hoover Dam, I feel a responsibility to honor his death by educating others about suicide prevention. I sincerely thank you for taking the time to read this article. In doing so, you also honor the lives of those who have died by suicide.
Joiner, T.E. (2011). Myths about suicide. Cambridge, MA, MA: Harvard University Press
Seiden, R. (1978). Where are they now? A follow up study of suicide attempters from the Golden Gate Bridge. Suicide and Life Threatening Behavior, 8, 1-13.
Suicide data. (2019), September 27) Retrieved September 7, 2020 from https://www.who.int/mental_health/prevention/suicideprevent/en/
The Centura Health Foundations have partnered with Walden University for a new scholarship opportunity available to all Centura Health associates. Walden University has generously donated 30, $15,000 scholarships to Centura Health associates who enroll in a bachelor’s, master’s, or doctoral program and begin classes on or before December 31, 2020 at Walden University. For scholars whose degree program exceeds $15,000, your local Centura Health hospital foundation will provide a 50% matching gift to each scholarship winner (not to exceed $7,500).
With more than 80-degree programs and more than 385 specializations and concentrations, Walden University can offer Centura Health associates a way to build highly transferable skills that can be immediately applied, as well as a pathway for greater career success. To qualify for a scholarship, the degree program you enroll in must meet the hiring needs of Centura Health. With only 30 scholarships available to Centura Health associates this will be a highly competitive application process.
This unique opportunity is powered by philanthropy and would not be possible without the generosity of Walden University and our community of donors, including many associate donors.
Today is the last day to apply for this scholarship. To be eligible, all applicants must apply and be accepted into Walden University and submit a complete scholarship application (application, personal essay, resume and letter of recommendation) to foundationscholarships@centura.org by midnight on September 15.
You can also visit WaldenU.edu/CenturaHealth-Scholars to learn how to apply, eligibility and requirements, and important deadlines.
Sissel Jacob named Vice President of Operations at St. Anthony North Health Campus
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