It’s tempting to tell patients that you understand what they’re going through, and easy to recognize when they don’t believe you. But when Lucy Gehan says she can relate, she means it. After all, she was once treated in the same TUH-Episcopal Campus Emergency Department, Crisis Response Center, and Behavioral Health units where she now works.
For years, Gehan struggled with substance use disorder and a bipolar diagnosis before having her daughter, entering recovery, and committing to Cognitive Behavioral Therapy. In 2017, she became a Certified Peer Specialist, providing support to patients with mental health diagnoses. In 2022, she qualified as a Certified Recovery Specialist, and was recently promoted to Lead Recovery Specialist at Episcopal.
“I’m actually from this neighborhood,” Gehan says. “I was born, raised, and live close to the hospital. When I tell patients, ‘I still live a few blocks from here,’ they can’t believe it. They’re like, ‘What? And you’re in recovery?’ But I say, ‘You can do it too! It doesn’t matter where you are. If you want to move to Alaska to recover, but you aren’t committed to it, you’re going to find those substances in Alaska.’ What matters is who we are: we take ourselves with us wherever we go.”
One Conversation, Ninety Days
It’s this perspective that makes Gehan such an indispensable part of Temple Health’s Substance Use Disorder (SUD) Engagement Team. She and her fellow Certified Recovery Specialists all have at least 18 months of recovery, have earned a certification from the Pennsylvania Certification Board, and use their experiences to inform the support they offer patients.
“Our Certified Recovery Specialists provide peer support, substance use intervention, patient advocacy, and linkage to resources like inpatient treatment upon discharge and intensive outpatient services, housing resources, AA and NA meetings, food pantries, ID resources, medication-assisted treatment, and more,” explains Gloria Gonzalez, Director of Substance Use Disorder Engagement.
The Certified Recovery Specialists operate out of our Main, Jeanes, and Episcopal Campuses, including in Episcopal’s Crisis Response Center and new Substance Use Disorder Clinic. They play a vital role in our multidisciplinary care teams, as patients often feel comfortable opening up to—and accepting treatment from—them in a way they don’t with other staff members.
“Recently, one of our Certified Recovery Specialists, Brian, met with a patient in the Emergency Department after an overdose,” Gonzalez says. “He sat with her for a while, and they talked about treatment options and their shared experience with substance use disorder. By the end of their conversation, she chose to sign up for Episcopal’s suboxone clinic. She saw our therapist and psychiatrist, and later, she was able to qualify for the sublocade shot.”
“That’s a big deal,” Gonzalez continues, “because to go from suboxone to sublocade means you’ve decreased your substance use to the point that you aren’t testing positive for any opioids or fentanyl. All of that started with just one conversation with Brian in the ED—and now, that patient is about to reach 90 days of sobriety.”
Speaking the Same Language
Gonzalez does her best to place each Certified Recovery Specialist in an environment where they will be especially effective in connecting with patients. “I want to identify what their strengths are, and put them somewhere I know they’ll thrive,” she says. “For example, Lucy identifies as having co-occurring disorders involving both mental health and substance use, and is a Certified Peer and Recovery Specialist. That’s why having her do inpatient work at Episcopal, where many of her patients are dealing with those dual diagnoses, is a great fit.”
The team’s success means Gonzalez is currently looking to hire several additional Certified Recovery Specialists. “Eventually, I want to have one Recovery Specialist on each unit,” she says. “I also want to create a ladder of professionalism and career growth that would encourage our Recovery Specialists to go back to school and become therapists in the SUD Clinic. That would be a full-circle moment for them.”
But Gonzalez also knows that the Certified Recovery Specialists’ most valuable knowledge is “something that can’t be taught: their lived experience.” For Gehan, this is also what sets them apart—and why they’ve been so successful at reaching patients.
“Sometimes, our patients are traumatized when they come to the hospital,” Gehan says. “Having a Certified Recovery Specialist there to provide support goes a long way, because there’s someone who knows exactly what it’s like, and who can speak a language with them that no one else really can. That’s prevented so many patients from leaving before they’ve completed treatment. Patients work with us, and are receptive to staying in the hospital to receive the care they need. It’s just beautiful: it really is.”