Patient Advocate Emergency Department

Mount Sinai Medical Center of Florida•Miami Beach, FL

11d

About The Position

The Patient Advocate supports patient and family comfort, communication, and satisfaction in the Emergency Department. The role conducts regular rounds in treatment rooms and waiting areas, responds to non-clinical needs, explains the ED process, and provides appropriate updates while respecting privacy and role boundaries. The Patient Advocate listens to concerns, helps de-escalate frustration, works with ED leadership to address service issues, and escalates complex complaints, safety concerns, or unresolved matters through hospital channels. The role also communicates clinical concerns to the care team, participates in ED huddles, documents rounding and service-recovery activity, and shares trends to support patient-experience and quality-improvement goals.

Requirements

High school diploma or equivalent.
1–2 years of experience in customer service, hospitality, patient advocacy, healthcare support, or another public-facing role.
Strong communication, active-listening, empathy, and de-escalation abilities.
Ability to communicate concerns requiring clinical assessment to the appropriate care-team member and work within role scope and privacy expectations.

Nice To Haves

Prior experience in a hospital, clinic, Emergency Department, crisis-support, or high-stress service environment.

Responsibilities

Conduct continuous, systematic rounds in ED treatment rooms and waiting areas to assess comfort, identify concerns, and provide timely support.
Address non-clinical needs, such as providing warm blankets, pillows, reading materials, phone chargers, and approved water or snacks when permitted by clinical staff.
Monitor the patient environment and report cleanliness, supply, environmental services, or maintenance concerns to the appropriate department or leader.
Help patients and families understand the Emergency Department process, including triage, testing, treatment flow, consults, disposition planning, and next steps.
Provide compassionate and realistic updates about wait times, test results, imaging, evaluations, consults, admissions, transfers, and discharge planning within role scope and privacy expectations.
Facilitate communication with family members and support appropriate information sharing in accordance with HIPAA and hospital policy.
Use active listening, empathy, and de-escalation techniques to respond to frustration and support a calm, respectful care environment.
Address concerns in real time when possible and partner with ED leadership to resolve dissatisfaction related to communication, delays, comfort needs, or other non-clinical concerns.
Escalate complex complaints, grievances, safety concerns, or unresolved issues to the appropriate hospital leaders or teams.
Promptly communicate patient concerns, pain complaints, changes in condition, or requests requiring clinical assessment to the assigned nurse, provider, or charge nurse.
Participate in ED huddles and collaborate with nurses, physicians, advanced practice providers, registration, social work, case management, security, environmental services, and patient experience staff.
Document rounding activity, patient concerns, common themes, service-recovery actions, and escalations in the designated tracking process.
Identify trends, share feedback with leadership, and reinforce behaviors that support responsiveness, communication, safety, and patient perception of care.