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November 10, 2025 14 mins
November is National Hospice and Palliative Care Month, a time dedicated to raising awareness about hospice and palliative care and celebrating the professionals and volunteers who provide this essential care. Our guest is Dr. Linda Valentino, Chief Nursing Officer at NY City-based Calvary Hospital. Calvary is the country’s only hospital dedicated to providing hospice and palliative care to adult patients with advanced cancer and other life-limiting illness.
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Speaker 1 (00:01):
Welcome to Get Connected with Nina Del Rio, a weekly
conversation about fitness, health and happenings in our community on
one oh six point seven Light FM.

Speaker 2 (00:12):
Thanks for listening to Get Connected in November, which is
National Hospice and Palliative Care Month, a time dedicated to
raising awareness about hospice and palliative care and celebrating the
professionals and volunteers who provide this essential care. Our guest
is doctor Linda Valentino. She is Chief Nursing Officer at
New York City based Cavalry Hospital. Cavalry is the country's

(00:35):
only hospital dedicated to providing hospice and palliative care to
adult patients with advanced cancer and other life limiting illness.
Doctor Linda Valentino, thank you for being on the show.

Speaker 3 (00:46):
Great to be here. Thank you for having me.

Speaker 2 (00:48):
Doctor Linda Valentino is a highly accomplished nurse executive with
over thirty years of leadership experience in advancing nursing practice,
optimizing workforce engagement, and driving organizational transformation. Prior to Cavalry,
she served as Chief Nursing Officer and vice president at
Mount Sinai Health System. You can find out more about
Cavalry at Cavalryhospital dot Org. So again, Linda, this is

(01:13):
the only acute palliative care hospital in the country, which
is kind of incredible. You are at the forefront end
of a very unique healthcare model. Let's start by defining
what it is. What is a palliative care hospital and
how is it different from a regular hospital.

Speaker 4 (01:28):
So at CALVARYE you mentioned, we're in acutecare hospital that's
fully devoted to palliative care. That makes us truly unique
in the environment of hospitals. When people hear palliative care,
they often think of hospice or end of life care.
But what we do at Calvary goes beyond that. We
provide the same level of medical attention that you find

(01:48):
in any acute care hospital, administering ivy therapies, wound care,
pain management, but our focus is different. We're not trying
to cure disease. We're focused on the comfort, dignity, and
quality of life of the patients who choose to have
their care here. So every day, nurses, doctors, social workers,

(02:09):
chaplains care for patients who are living with advanced life
limiting illnesses. But in a very unique environment. It's a calm,
compassionate care environment, both for the patient and their family.

Speaker 3 (02:23):
So that makes us different.

Speaker 2 (02:25):
Well, and why is a hospital specific to this kind
of care important?

Speaker 4 (02:30):
You know, I think it's important because palliative care is
often given in other acute care settings. However, in those settings,
the focus is really on saving lives, if you will,
and oftentimes patients who are at this phase of their
illness or have life limiting illnesses, they want to be

(02:50):
cared for in a different setting. They don't want aggressive treatment,
they want to be in an environment where their family
can be included in a different way. And so with
many people who are aging, we're going to see a
real shift in the population who will want care in
a setting such as calvary versus and acute care setting
where saving lives and advancing medicine is thought of in

(03:13):
a different way.

Speaker 2 (03:14):
It's really interesting, actually, I think most people will remember
that Jimmy Carter was in hospice for two years, which
might have been a unique case, but in fact people
are staying longer in hospice. What would you attribute that
to and how does that change your approach to a
particular patient's comfort and quality of life.

Speaker 4 (03:32):
So the patients that we serve here at Calvary are
generally patients that are at end of life, and the
treatment we provide is largely palliative care hospice care. Sometimes
it's difficult to understand the difference between hospice care and
palliative care. Hospice care is a specific type of palliative
care that's designed really for people who are at the

(03:55):
final months of their life, and they can choose to
have that care provided at home. But it's hard to
know when patients actually are going to die, right. We
can't predict that generally, and so for Jimmy Carter, he
was on hospice for a while, probably maybe longer than
what we would care for patients in our acute setting.
So we do have patients that come here that are

(04:18):
pretty much at the end stage of many disease entities
and choose this care because of the cradle in which
we provide for both the patient and family. And so
if patients can have hospice care at home, they can
achieve the same, but they choose to be at home.

Speaker 2 (04:36):
Is everyone who's eligible or who would like hospice or
palliative care able to receive.

Speaker 4 (04:41):
It, well, that's a tricky question, So insurance does play
a role in whether or not you can receive palliative
care in a home setting. Hospice care generally, yes, is
covered by most major insurances, including Medicare, so palliaty of care. However,

(05:02):
some physicians and nurses might say that palliative care is
just good medicine and nursing and largely can be integrated
into other treatment modalities, but isn't always the case. But
the type of palliative care that we give at end
of life is a very specific form of palliative care,
so it's difficult for the general public to think.

Speaker 3 (05:23):
About it that way.

Speaker 4 (05:24):
But it can be specific kind of care that's reimbursed,
but it also is good medicine.

Speaker 2 (05:30):
We're speaking with doctor Linda Valentino. She's Chief nursing Officer
of Cavalry Hospital. Her distinguished career spends multiple leading New
York City healthcare institutions and a broad spectrum of nursing disciplines,
including trauma and burned care, women and children's health, oncology
and palliative care, ambulatory services, and system wide responses to
COVID nineteen. You're listening to get connected on one six

(05:52):
point seven Light FM. I'mina del Rio. You can find
out more about Cavalry at Cavalryhospital dot org. Nurse have
some of the most challenging jobs. You're often dealing with
emotionally challenging patients and family situations. You have to work
between the families. What specific qualities do you look for

(06:12):
in a nurse and how do you train them to
sustain such a high level of empathy.

Speaker 3 (06:17):
Yeah, you're absolute right.

Speaker 4 (06:19):
Our nurses care for patients and families and some of
the most emotional and very much sacred moments of their life.
It takes a very special kind of person to do
this work. And at Calvary we look for nurses who
are not only clinically skilled, but deeply empathic, patient centered,
and grounded, people who listened with their hearts as well

(06:41):
as their hands. And we teach procedures and protocols, but
we can't teach compassion. And that's what makes the Calvary
nurse a unique nurse. And I'd like to say that
we are unique in the environment of recruiting and retaining
nurses in that we have a very low turnover rate
here in our nursing staff at Calvary and Oftentimes the

(07:03):
nurses who want to do the care as I've described
seek us out and want to come and work here
because that whole caring framework and compassion is really important
to them, and it's really a way of the living.
The mission of Calvary, which is from its founding, has
been to care for people at the end of their

(07:24):
life in a compassionate way when others may not have
And now as we advance palliative and hospice care in
terms of advancing science, nurses want to be a part.

Speaker 3 (07:34):
Of that as well.

Speaker 2 (07:35):
I don't know if you're aware, but light FM has
a huge listener base of nurses and medical professionals who
might not be specialized in this particular field. Can you
talk about transitioning to palliato our hospice care. How would
someone do that?

Speaker 3 (07:50):
I think we take all commerce.

Speaker 4 (07:51):
So if you have if you have a clinical background,
we certainly have programs, for example, for new nurses residency
programs where we teach them how to care for patients
in this environment, teach them palliative care.

Speaker 3 (08:06):
But we would do the same.

Speaker 4 (08:07):
For any experienced nurse who would transition with experience, and
we would onboard them in the same way, So any
nurse new or otherwise experienced would be welcome here.

Speaker 2 (08:19):
Regarding family and loved ones, how do you bring them
into the care process? What is their role in care?

Speaker 4 (08:25):
Yeah, so we consider the family as part of the
extended way in which we care for our patients, and
we have very robust resources within the hospital such as
our social work staff, our bereavement staff, and oftentimes and
our nurses will tell us this that they're caring more

(08:46):
for families than.

Speaker 3 (08:47):
In a way than they are for patients.

Speaker 4 (08:49):
Patients will often come to terms with what their life,
this end part of their life, but families sometimes aren't
there with the patients all the time. So we provide
very supportive infrastructure. So for example, interdisciplinary teams will meet
every day and talk about cases, and that includes social work, bereavement,

(09:09):
spiritual care. Our pastoral care services play a very very
important role for families because often families in these circumstances
will lean on their faith or their beliefs in terms
of being able to get through this very difficult time
in their life. And we aim through our interdisciplinary interventions

(09:30):
to provide comfort, dignity and peace for the whole person
that we're caring for but for their family as well,
and staff make attachments that are very very strong with
family members as a result of that, and our services
go beyond the time of the loved one's death. We

(09:50):
have a bereavement service that will last up to two
years for families who choose to engage in the bereavement
counseling process and and it can be highly supportive in
life altering for families in terms of getting through that
process in a way that is meaningful.

Speaker 2 (10:08):
When you're talking about supports too, I wonder if you
can discuss what role volunteering plays.

Speaker 4 (10:14):
Yeah, volunteers are really important to us as well, and
many volunteers that are here. We have programs for our patients,
activities where patients can We serve Massier every day at
eleven thirty, so whatever faith you are, you can join
or not. We have activities with music and art therapy.

(10:35):
Many of our volunteers have had family experiences here at
Calvary and come back to support the patients in those
activities and are on standby in a way that is
again very meaningful to them based on their own experience.

Speaker 2 (10:52):
Given the unique perspective you have at Cavalry, what are
you learning that will help in the future, and what
do you hope to see over the next decade.

Speaker 3 (11:00):
Yeah, that's that is a great question.

Speaker 4 (11:02):
So I think what we're going to see is what's
being called the silver tsunami, and that is what is
it one in five patients or over sixty five now
or people are over sixty five. So I think, you know,
we are very uniquely positioned to embrace the aging population
and that our expertise in palliative care really gives us

(11:24):
a front row seat to what will improve patient lives
and the quality of their life at.

Speaker 3 (11:30):
End of life.

Speaker 4 (11:32):
So we as nurses, for example, received recently a grants
from the Mother Cabrini Health Foundation to advance a Pathway
to Excellence designation by the American Nurses Credentialing Center, which.

Speaker 3 (11:45):
Means we have a designation that.

Speaker 4 (11:48):
We are some of the most high quality nurses. Five
percent or something of hospitals and healthcare systems in the
country have this designation, and so we're equipping our nurses
is not only to advance palliative care, but the quality
of care that we give, how to measure that, and
how to be an exemplar in the environment where we're

(12:10):
giving care to others, so we expect to see more
patients coming to us, and we expect to see that
care to be of more high quality than what even.

Speaker 3 (12:20):
It is now.

Speaker 2 (12:21):
Finally, on a personal note, this is very challenging work.
What do you take away from it? What is the
most rewarding thing about it? When the focus is not
on curing but on caring for people?

Speaker 4 (12:32):
For me personally, and I know for our staff here,
it really is the humanity part of what the human
part of what we do, and giving patients and their
family members that level of comfort, dignity and meaning at
the end of their life is very memorable, not just

(12:53):
for patients and families, but it is for our staff. So,
in a strange analogy, if you're giving birth to a baby,
think about that as one of life's really defining moments
and what it means to have a supportive staff. And
every woman I've ever known that's given birth remembers the
moment that their child was born and who was there

(13:15):
and the care that they received. It's really no different.
And so while it's challenging and now navigating the emotional
weight of death is difficult, but it's also very memorable
and extremely rewarding.

Speaker 2 (13:29):
Our guest is doctor Linda Valentino. She's Chief nursing officer
at Cavalry Hospital. You can find out more at Cavalryhospital
dot org. Doctor Valentino, thank you for being on Get Connected.

Speaker 3 (13:40):
Thank you Nina.

Speaker 1 (13:41):
This has been Get Connected with Nina del Rio on
one O six point seven light Fm. The views and
opinions of our guests do not necessarily reflect the views
of the station. If you missed any part of our
show or want to share it, visit our website for
downloads and podcasts at one oh six to seven lightfm
dot com. Thanks for listening.
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