Who We Are: What Care Looks Like at Ember

This film from Chandler Kauffman’s award-shortlisted docuseries, The Ember Project, illustrates what compassionate care at Ember looks like, and how the “humans of Ember” make the difference for people feeling safe and well cared for. 

As one patient shared, “When it comes to mental health, the structure of a safe place to be, to talk about things, is everything.” 

In the 5-minute video, patients describe how the constant presence of skilled, compassionate clinical staff makes them feel medically protected and psychologically supported throughout treatment. Their stories show that trust in the person in the room—their training, attentiveness, and ability to respond to both physical and emotional needs—is fundamental to feeling safe enough to fully engage in the experience, and to receive IV ketamine treatment with confidence.

You can read the team’s full video transcript below. 

Christey Curran [Infusion Nurse]: At Ember Health, we are really unique because we offer the one-to-one care, and someone is sitting in the room with you. During my time here, I have seen how incredibly important that is; the presence of someone that they [patients] could trust allowed them to go deeper. They feel supported to have whatever experience they need to have, that what they're experiencing is okay.

Doc [Patient]: Christey's great. I feel like I'm her only patient, you know? She personalizes it. She makes you feel cared for.

Tiffany Franke [Co-founder & Chief Experience Officer]: At Ember Health, all of our clinicians are doctors and nurses who are trained to administer IV medications and keep people safe, and also to ensure psychological support.

Lu Ben-Ghaly [Clinician]: I'm responsible for supervising the actual administration of the ketamine. Sometimes it's myself personally administering the ketamine, other times it's nurses.

Jean Ellen [Patient]: At Ember, there's a clinician with you at all times; somebody who can take care of you no matter what happens. It's really important to me that Ember Health clinicians have experience in advanced airway management; that if something happens, they know how to help. And I've never called out, or needed somebody to intervene, but I know that someone – a medical person – is there with me the whole time, and that is really important.

Dylan [Patient]: I think one of the only reasons that I was willing to do it is because I knew that someone would be in the room with me the whole time.

Paul [Patient]: They're extremely data-driven. They constantly are reading new studies. They're constantly synthesizing new information about ketamine and about its treatment for depression. They know what's going on in the cutting-edge world of this medication.

Lu Ben-Ghaly [Clinician]: My primary function as a doctor is to provide the treatment while keeping the patient safe, but you cannot treat someone with depression and forget the component of emotional safety. It has to feel like a psychologically safe space, and that's one thing that Ember Health does really, really well.

Daniel [Patient]: It's a vulnerable place to be. You're in a room with one other person, and you are having a complex, disassociated experience, and if I didn't trust the other person in the room to have my back, I would've felt unsafe. When it comes to mental health, the structure of a safe place to be to talk about things is everything, and Ember provides that safety.

Tiffany Franke [Co-founder & Chief Experience Officer]: We believe that no detail is too small to focus on when it comes to potentially leading to better outcomes for our patients.

Paul [Patient]: Knowing that Ember is so detail-oriented, it gives me comfort as a person and makes you feel so much more cared about.

Mahla [Patient]: I have needle phobia, but the way they approached me with care, explained everything, and worked with me around my phobia – that showed a lot of care to me.

Tiffany Franke [Co-founder & Chief Experience Officer]: We look for people who are compassionate caregivers. That's a requisite for everybody, and not just our clinicians – for all of our administrators.

Daniel [Patient]: The front office is just as good as the back office, you know. The doctors and the caregivers and the immediate people who are hands-on, and the people who help you schedule – everybody's great.

Aruna Singh [Operations Administrator]: It's very moving to know that, sitting at the front desk, you play such an integral part in this person feeling comfortable and safe, and you're the first face that they see. Where they can let go and relax and trust that they're in safe hands right now.

Dylan [Patient]: The people at Ember Health really see you. I felt very much like I was coming here to a place that people knew who I was and actually cared about how I was doing.

Lu Ben-Ghaly [Clinician]: Another big part of what I do is the coordination with the patient's providers. One of the most critical functions that we have is making sure that all of these different individuals, who all have their eye on how well is this person feeling over time, are all on the same page, and all know exactly what's going on in every corner with this person's care plan.

Christine Menna [Provider, Founder of Sōhum Therapy]: There's such a collaboration that feels so genuine and so natural, and I feel like no stone is left unturned.

Mahla [Patient]: They also told me that they need to talk to my therapist and psychiatrist, which – those people are the people that know me the best and know the diagnosis – and the way they followed up and set up the appointments.

Daniel [Patient]: Every person I've met there has been kind, caring, brilliant, easy to talk to, willing to talk. They've earned my trust completely, which is… beyond rare, in any kind of medical situation.

Jean Ellen [Patient]: I've been around medical people all my life, and I've run clinics before, so I kind of know when some places run well and when it's not, and this place is run very well.

Paul [Patient]: I wouldn't say, "Go get ketamine anywhere." I would, without hesitation, say, "Go get ketamine at Ember," because they do it right. They do it carefully. They do it in a caring way, and they do it in a way that is helping so many people.