Pediatric Residency

The Pediatric Residency Experience

The Pediatric Residency experience at The Children’s Regional Hospital at Cooper 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. 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 6 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. Approximately 50% of our graduates pursue careers in the pediatric subspecialties.

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.

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