By Anita Creamer and Monique Binkley Smith, Vitals contributors

It’s been a challenging time in healthcare. So when one Northern California healthcare system began planning its fall 2022 advertising campaign, its marketing team decided to highlight the system’s high-quality, personal care and salute the hardworking employees and physicians who provide that care. And who best to share their commitment and pride than the doctors, nurses, and other employees themselves?

Within days of asking team members if they’d like to be featured in the commercial, several hundred people from across Sutter Health’s not-for-profit network enthusiastically responded. It turns out, a lot of people who work within Sutter are eager to share their pride with the community.

Click here to watch a special cut of our new ad, which showcases doctors, nurses and employees who appear in the commercial. And watch the commercial that airs for the public beginning Sept. 28 below.

“The people who can tell Sutter Health’s story the best are our own people,” says Jim Macksood, Sutter’s vice president of marketing. “They have an innate sense of commitment and compassion toward the people we serve, and they take such pride in the work we do.”

And now these workforce members are stars, courtesy of Sutter’s new fall ad campaign. About 20 participants from across the healthcare network are featured in this commercial (shown in the video below), which showcases real people and real examples of how exceptional care is provided across Sutter in a thousand ways, big and small.

Among the people you’ll spot in the commercial:

Williamson Roasa, R.N., is a staff nurse at Sutter’s Eden Medical Center in Castro Valley. “Our nurses are a hard-working group of professionals,” he says.

Williamson Roasa, RN, is a nurse at Eden Medical Center.

“At Sutter Health, you can excel in your profession. You will learn a lot about exceptional patient care at Sutter, and your career can soar as high as you’d like to imagine.”  Watch more of what he has to say.

Jesse Young works in environmental services at the Oakland campus of Sutter’s Alta Bates Summit Medical Center, helping keep the hospital clean. Two years ago, his mother was a patient in the hospital, where care teams were with her until the end. Now, when he delivers linens and mops floors in the unit where she passed away, he pauses to remember her and her spirit.

Jesse Young works in the Environmental Services Department at Alta Bates Summit Medical Center.

“Even though I have a job to do, I stop and gather my thoughts,” he says. “I understand what other families are going through on that unit. But knowing that I’m helping other people’s family members helps me get through the day.”

Sally Zhen, M.D., is an OB-GYN, is a hospitalist at Sutter’s California Pacific Medical Center’s Van Ness campus in San Francisco.

“I appreciate the teamwork within Sutter,” she says. “I enjoy taking care of patients and guiding them through their pregnancy and their labor and delivery process. I really like the support that I have from the nurses and nurse midwives. We work together really well.”

Sally Zhen, MD, is an OB/GYN at CPMC.

Dr. Zhen adds that for her, the most touching moment is when she has the privilege of introducing a parent to their baby for the first time. “It’s the look on a mother’s face when I show her her new baby,” she says. “That’s why I do my job.”

Dineen Greer, M.D., is a Sutter Medical Foundation family medicine physician who is the program director for the Sutter Family Medicine Residency in Sacramento.

Dineen Greer, MD, is the program director for the Sutter Family Medicine Residency.

“Sutter Health has been amazingly supportive of the residency program,” she says. “It takes a lot of commitment and resources to train physicians, and I’ve always been very proud that I am part of an organization that helps train the physicians of the future.”

“We have so many stories to tell and so many amazing colleagues who want to help us tell those stories,” says Macksood. “It was incredible to see how good these people were in front of a camera,” he adds. “You can’t recreate that kind of pride. It’s a wonderful frame to see all the different roles and jobs within the Sutter organization that come together to provide excellent care to our patients.”

The TV commercial launches Sept. 28 as part of Sutter’s fall advertising campaign that runs through mid-November with ads on TV, radio, billboards, social media, podcasts, and streaming audio and video.