Dr. Saito is a Director of Inpatient Services at Zucker Hillside Hospital. Dr. Saito’s responsibilities encompass clinical oversight of treatment provided for the inpatient population at Zucker Hillside Hospital (approximately 4500 discharges/year) and supervising 26 inpatient providers, enhancing educational experiences for more than 500 students on campus throughout the year and engaging and facilitating research projects.
Prior to taking this leadership role in the Department of Psychiatry, Dr. Saito successfully led a team of clinicians in an adolescent inpatient psychiatric unit for more than 10 years. Her innovation included incorporation of dialectical behavioral therapy (DBT) into an acute care adolescent unit. It is noted that still to this day, an adolescent unit at Zucker Hillside Hospital is the only acute care inpatient unit for adolescents with full model DBT program. Dr. Saito is an established researcher with numerous national and international presentations and peer reviewed publications. Dr. Saito is also a dedicated teacher who was awarded with Northwell Health System’s Outstanding Teacher Award in Psychiatry in 2015 and Teaching Excellence Award in Child and Adolescent Psychiatry in 2020. During her career, Dr. Saito has supervised more than 300 trainees in psychiatry and child and adolescent psychiatry and worked as a preceptor for medical students from Zucker School of Medicine since its opening.
Dr. Saito is a graduate of Sapporo Medical University, School of Medicine in Japan. She entered a residency program in New York and joined the psychiatric residency at North Shore University Hospital campus as a second year psychiatric resident in 1997. Then she joined the child and adolescent psychiatry fellowship program on Zucker Hillside campus and remained as a faculty after completion of her training.