 The general principles overriding the residency
program are:
- Education comes first
- Residency should be an enjoyable experience.
The program is driven by education – not by service needs – for all of its residents (11 traditional categorical internal medicine per year, 2 Primary Care categorical internal medicine per year, and four preliminary interns). The foundation of the program, which is fully accredited with the ACGME and The American Osteopathic Association, is its written curriculum, a document that provides the specific educational goals for each of the rotations in internal medicine in each year of training.
The strength of our program resides in the spectrum of patients and the diversity of the attendings with whom our residents work. The exposure to community-based, voluntary attendings in both general medicine and subspecialties complements exposure to the full-time faculty. Unlike the prototypical university urban medical center in which the overwhelming majority of patients are admitted from the immediate surrounding community, the patient population cared for by our residents represents a balanced mixture of private and service patients.
Our program also offers the house staff the resources of seven on-site, fully accredited sub-specialty training programs. These include fellowships in Cardiology, Nephrology, Hematology-Oncology, Pulmonary-Critical Care, Infectious Diseases, Interventional Cardiology and Cardiac Electrophysiology. Fellows in these seven subspecialty areas interact with residents rotating through their respective consultation services, the Intensive Care Unit, the Coronary Care Unit, Telemetry Unit, and the Oncology inpatient service. In addition, fellows actively participate in teaching and supervision of house staff on both an inpatient and outpatient basis, and facilitate house staff participation in research activities within their subspecialty divisions.
 During the first two years, residents spend the bulk of their inpatient time rotating through the general medical floor and select subspecialty floor rotations. The first two years are also supplemented with experiences in MICU, CCU, Emergency Department, and certain subspecialties. A teaching attending is assigned to each inpatient team, supervising housestaff in the care of all teaching service patients and conducting daily teaching rounds. In addition, the floor teams will care for select private patients who are admitted to the teaching service at the request of the private attending, as allowed by the volume of patients on the service.
On Sunday through Friday nights, a night float team admits patients to the teaching services from 8 p.m. to 7 a.m. These night admissions are presented at Morning Report and assigned to the floor teams. This system permits us to control the flow of admissions and ensures that the education of the resident remains the priority of the program. Caps are established for admissions per day and total census for each PGY 1 and PGY 2 resident according to ACGME guidelines and these caps are enforced. Weekend coverage is provided with a split shift by the floor team members from Saturday morning through Sunday evening, ensuring adherence with ACGME duty-hour regulations enacted in July 2011.
A sample rotation schedule is provided in the Curriculum
section.
 Ambulatory experiences are integral to the the education of our residents. In addition to the weekly continuity clinic experience at our hospital-based Adult Health Center, residents are assigned to two block ambulatory rotations in the first year, one and a half in the second year and an Ambulatory-Rheumatology rotation in their third year. These blocks permit rotation through clinics in both medical and non-medical specialties, as well as exposure to off-site private and community-based practices.
The PGY 2 and 3 years include rotations through all the specialties of internal medicine. The residents thus develop skills through consultation service and specialty outpatient experiences.
We recognize the importance of certain administrative and non-medical education throughout the residency. Formal education in medical ethics, medical economics, utilization management, quality management, and legal aspects of medicine is provided throughout the residency.
 Our program is relatively small and nearly all core rotations take place at Newark Beth Israel Medical Center. We are proud of the friendly, intimate atmosphere which we can offer. We also pay careful attention to the human aspects of residency training by providing a favorable call schedule, meals while on call, and comfortable, convenient sleeping quarters with a modern, well-equipped lounge.
The affiliation with UMDNJ-New Jersey Medical School also provides residents the opportunity to participate in educational experiences at this near-by top medical school and leading health care facility.
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