Pediatric Residency

Thank you for your interest in our program. The field of pediatrics is an exciting and rewarding one. There is great joy in working with children and their families. Cooper University Hospital has been doing very well over the past few  years. With new leadership and expansion of services, Cooper has become stronger in its role as the academic medical center of South Jersey. The Children’s Regional Hospital at Cooper University Hospital has an accredited pediatric residency program that will provide you with the knowledge and clinical experience necessary to become a successful pediatrician. Our full-time faculty is energetic, enthusiastic and committed to teaching. We have earned an excellent reputation by providing quality medical care in a family-centered environment. We have worked equally hard within our medical education program to create a friendly atmosphere that is conducive to learning.

Our teaching programs in pediatrics have undergone a number of changes over the past several years. Although some of these changes have been in response to duty hours restrictions, including the addition of night float to protect elective time, most have been generated by feedback received from residents and graduates. The result is a program that focuses on resident-directed education and lifelong learning. The program uses a several different interactive conferences to accomplish this. You will find the details of these conferences on the pages that follow.

We have an integrated osteopathic and allopathic residency program that enables osteopathic physicians enrolled in it to pursue dual certification by the American Board of Osteopathic Pediatricians and the American Board of Pediatrics. It is an extremely popular and very competitive program. We invite you to visit and learn more about our program. Please call our Medical Education Office at 856 757-7904 if you have any questions.

The Pediatric Residency experience at The Children’s Regional Hospital at Cooper University Hospital will provide you with a balanced exposure to both primary care pediatrics and the pediatric subspecialties. We not only have a well-established role as a regional center for pediatric tertiary care, but also have a longstanding commitment as primary caregivers to the children of the city of Camden. Of our 81,000 outpatient visits each year, more than 17,500 are for primary care pediatrics, another 14,500 are for pediatric medical subspecialties, 34,000 are for pediatric surgical subspecialties, and the remaining 15,000 are pediatric emergency room visits. Nearly 6,500 infants and children are admitted each year to our inpatient units. In addition to primary care pediatrics, your residency experience will expose you to the full array of pediatric subspecialty and support services. These include: adolescent medicine, allergy/immunology, cardiology, critical care medicine, dermatology, developmental and behavorial pediatrics, endocrinology, gastroenterology, genetics, infectious diseases, neonatology, neurology, pulmonary medicine, and psychiatry. Pediatric surgical subspecialties include adolescent gynecology, craniofacial surgery, general pediatric surgery, neurosurgery, ophthalmology, orthopedics, otolaryngology, plastic and reconstructive surgery. Other departments within the hospital with pediatric subspecialists include Anesthesiology, Pathology, Physical and Rehabilitative Medicine, Radiology, and Emergency Medicine.

A Pediatric Residency with us can provide you with some unique clinical opportunities. Cooper’s location in an urban setting provides exposure to a broad range of patients needing primary care. Our role as a regional tertiary referral center brings a diversified patient mix, since we draw patients from a 10-county area that includes urban, suburban, rural, and resort communities. Many of our programs have been designated by the State Department of Health as the regional providers of their respective services. In addition, many of our divisions provide the only subspecialists of their kind practicing full-time in southern New Jersey. Cooper’s Regional Trauma Center is the only Level I center for the southern half of the state. We are also one of only two regional perinatal centers in the seven southernmost counties of the state.

As one of our pediatric residents, you will be exposed to chronic as well as acute care. Part of your training experience will include a rotation in our Child Development Center, which provides comprehensive, multidisciplinary child  development services on an outpatient basis. This rotation will offer you the experience of working with psychologists, learning disability specialists, occupational therapists, approach to rehabilitation, applied within a chronic care setting.

Our current inpatient facilities include 56 neonatal/infant beds: 23 in the intensive care nursery, 9 in the intermediate care nursery, and 24 for normal newborns who room-in with their mothers. In addition, there are 29 beds for children past the neonatal infant period: 24 for general pediatric/subspecialty care and 5 for intensive care.

Our current outpatient facilities include three suburban sites in addition to the ambulatory center located on our Camden campus. One of the suburban sites, The Children’s Regional Center in Moorestown, is devoted to pediatric medical subspecialty care. However, The Children’s Regional Center in Voorhees offers both surgical and medical pediatric subspecialty care. Pediatric residents on subspecialty electives rotate through these suburban facilities. Our newest location is The Children’s Regional Center at Bunker Hill, where pediatric primary care services are provided. One of the goals of our medical education program is to expose our residents to a diversity of experience. Our facultys' varied backgrounds in academic medicine and private practice offer our residents a unique perspective on pediatrics that prepares them for careers in either setting. Although 25 percent of our recent graduates have gone on to subspecialty training, the majority of our graduates pursue careers in primary care pediatrics.

A second goal of our medical education program is to keep the process as personalized as possible. Both our full-time subspecialists and our general pediatricians are accessible and available to residents. Our program is built on a foundation of regular one-to-one interaction between house staff and attendings. This allows for the development of a mentoring relationship between our residents and faculty. In addition, it opens opportunities for our residents to join in our facultys' ongoing research projects. We also encourage mentoring relationships between our residents and medical students. As the clinical campus of the University of Medicine and Dentistry of New Jersey–Robert Wood Johnson Medical School at Camden, we have medical students participating in the care of our pediatric inpatients and outpatients. Part of your responsibility as a pediatric resident will include the supervision of these students.

We have 24 approved pediatric residency positions, 8 each at the PGY-1, PGY-2, and PGY-3 levels. We also have a Pediatric Critical Care Medicine Fellowship program.

CLICK HERE to download, view and print the complete Pediatrics residency brochure

Contact Information

Director: William R. Graessle, M.D.
Contact: Jeanne Lanzo or Ramonita Ortiz
Phone: (856) 757-7904
Fax: (856) 968-9598
Email: lanzo-jeanne@cooperhealth.edu or ortiz-ramonita@cooperhealth.edu
Address: Cooper University Hospital, UMDNJ-RWJMS at Camden, 401 Haddon Avenue, Camden, NJ 08103

Training Sequence
The American Board of Pediatrics requires that every pediatric resident complete three years of training. Our program offers the following rotation schedule:

PGY-1
The “intern” year is designed to expose the resident to a wide range of pediatric problems. The first-year resident is considered the primary caregiver for those patients who are on his or her service. The NICU experience is devoted to gaining familiarity with premature and other ill newborn patients and their management. Initially, the intern is closely supervised by a senior resident, and given increasing autonomy as the year progresses. Interns are responsible for supervising medical students on the inpatient units. First-year residents take call every fourth night.

PGY-2
The second year involves managing increasingly ill children, especially in the PICU and the NICU. The role of the PGY-2 resident on the inpatient units is that of a supervisor. Several months of required and elective subspecialties are provided to expose the resident to more specific and difficult pediatric problems.

PGY-3
The final year of pediatric training is geared toward preparing the resident for his or her future career, be it in primary care pediatrics or fellowship training. The inpatient and outpatient experiences are supervisory in nature, with a considerable amount of time devoted to teaching the junior residents, interns, and medical students. The residents have a great deal of autonomy in management in the general pediatrics inpatient unit along with both the PICU and NICU. Several months of elective time are provided to ensure a well-rounded education prior to leaving Cooper.

Program Schedule / Electives

KEY: Inpt - Inpatient General Pediatrics, DP - Developmental Pediatrics, Outpt - Outpatient General Pediatrics, FTN - Full-Term Nursery, * - Supervisory Role, ED - Emergency Department. Com Ped - Community Pediatrics

Electives
The Accreditation Council for Graduate Medical Education requires that a minimum of four one-month rotations be completed by each resident, selected from among the following core pediatric subspecialties:

• Allergy/Immunology
• Cardiology
• Endocrinology/Metabolism
• Gastroenterology
• Genetics
• Hematology/Oncology
• Infectious Diseases
• Nephrology
• Neurology
• Pulmonology

• Rheumatology

In addition, our full-time faculty offers pediatric electives in:

• Anesthesia
• Child Psychiatry
• Dermatology
• ENT
• Otolaryngology
• Pediatric Radiology

• Pediatric Surgery/Urology

Conference/Rounds Taining Rounds and Conferences
Our program is built upon daily teaching opportunities that are both formal and informal in nature. Our schedule attempts to integrate bedside learning with a comprehensive program of structured conferences. Conferences attended by all residents, year-round, include:

Pediatric Grand Rounds
A weekly conference, these rounds feature topics presented by both full-time faculty and visiting professors. Attendees include house staff, faculty, pediatricians in private practice, nurses, and a variety of ancillary support staff.

Chief’s Rounds
Occurring weekly, this conference is run by the residents and offers the opportunity to present an interesting case to the residents and faculty. This exercise teaches the residents to generate a differential diagnosis and management strategy.

Friday Conference
A 90 minute session designed to cover the majority of topics in pediatrics and to make residents more independent learners. Assigned reading and questions are completed by each resident prior to the session, where they are discussed with faculty in an interactive fashion. This conference has been very well received by the residents.

Morbidity and Mortality Conference
An interesting case is presented in order to generate discussion from other faculty members during this monthly conference for both the pediatric house staff and the faculty. The pediatric pathologist also attends.

Journal Club
Two journal clubs are held monthly. Traditional Journal Club is presented monthly by a senior resident. Based on the principles of evidence-based medicine, this series of conferences is designed to teach residents to critically evaluate and apply the medical literature to patient care  Scanning Journal Club is a forum for discussion of the recent pediatric literature. Faculty are actively involved in both conferences to guide the residents through the process.

Retreats
Two resident retreats are held annually at an off-site location. One retreat is designated as a learning retreat and one for camaraderie and relaxation. Recent topics for retreats have included evidence-based medicine and teaching residents to be effective teachers.

Morning Report
Morning Report is held two times per week and is a forum for discussion of admissions to all services. In addition to the residents on the inpatient service, all residents onsite are encouraged to attend. General pediatrics and subspecialty faculty are present for the discussion. During the inpatient unit rotations, residents also attend the following:

• Resident Rounds: The floor team, which consists of two senior residents, three to four interns, medical students, and visiting residents, is responsible for conducting rounds and determining patient management.

• Pediatric Radiology Rounds: Radiology rounds, during which the pediatric radiology staff presents interesting cases, are scheduled for each inpatient unit on a biweekly basis. During subspecialty rotations, residents attend some of the following conferences: Cardiology, Cerebral Palsy, Child Evaluation Program, Critical Care/Physiology, Cytogenetics, Endocrinology, Infectious Diseases, OB/Pediatric, Neurocutaneous Disorders, Outpatient Management,  PKU, Pulmonology, Spina Bifida

Osteopathic Program
This combined residency program is offered to osteopathic students in lieu of a rotating internship. During the first year, residents rotate through Obstetrics, Surgery, Internal Medicine, and Pediatric Surgery. The outpatient experience is provided by UMDNJ– School of Osteopathic Medicine in Washington Township. The remainder of the program is identical to the allopathic program. A sample schedule for the osteopathic program is shown below.

The Director of Osteopathic Medical Education meets with the residents on a regular basis to discuss osteopathic issues. The program is accredited by the ACGME and the American Osteopathic Association, and graduates are eligible to take both board exams. Four positions per year are designated for this program.

PGY–1 Inpt Outpt NICU Inpt Int Med Outpt Inpt Surg FTN OB Peds Surg ED PGY–2 DP Elective PICU Outpt NICU or PICU Elective NICU Adol Med Chronic Care Inpt* Elective Com Peds PGY–3 Inpt* Outpt* Elective Outpt* NICU FTN Night Float* Inpt* Elective ED Elective Elective

KEY: Inpt - Inpatient General Pediatrics, DP - Developmental Pediatrics, Outpt - Outpatient General Pediatrics, FTN - Full-Term Nursery, * - Supervisory Role, ED - Emergency Department, Com Ped - Community Pediatrics