ZSFG recently appointed two seasoned staff members to join its nursing leadership team.

ZSFG appointed Merjo Roca as Nursing Director of Specialty Care. Merjo was the Nurse Manager for the ZSFG Urgent Care Center and the ZSFG Patient Vaccine Clinic. Merjo has a diverse leadership background in outpatient and inpatient nursing, a passion for performance improvement and increasing teamwork, and a love for teaching, coaching and mentoring staff. During both the pandemic and the Mpx health emergency, Merjo’s leadership was critical in quickly establishing and expanding testing and vaccinations for the community that helped vaccinate more than 213,000 patients during COVID and established ZSFG as a mass vaccination site, helping vaccinate more than 21,000 patients during the MPX health emergency.

ZSFG appointed Joan Torres as ZSFG Nursing Director for the Department of Psychiatry. Joan led the development and expansion of ZSFG’s Behavioral Emergency Response Team (BERT), a nationally recognized program that addresses the inequitable use of force on patients by law enforcement. It brings a trauma-informed approach to care, ensuring safety for staff and patients by de-escalating difficult situations before they become violent. Under Joan’s leadership, the team conducted thousands of consultations per year, preventing violence. Joan developed all the standard work and policies and procedures for BERT, hired and trained all members of the team, oversaw the operations of the department, and partnered with multidisciplinary stakeholders to establish BERT as a 24/7 service available throughout ZSFG as well as expanding it to the Emergency Department.