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ShareWhat Makes Cooper a Great Place to Train?
- An accessible full-time faculty dedicated to teaching and patient care. There are more than 150 full-time faculty members in the department who contribute to the teaching program.
- Our general medical patients are cared for by our academic hospitalist teams. This system ensures close supervision and interaction of attending physicians and house staff and excellent bedside teaching.
- Non-resident services to cover patients over the ACGME-RRC cap on teaching services.
- Emphasis on ambulatory care and the office practice of internal medicine. Overall, our residents spend nearly 40 percent of their time in ambulatory settings.
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Cooper’s new 10-story, 312,000 square-foot patient care pavilion provides state-of-the-art patient care facilities.
- An excellent, balanced mix of patients. Cooper is the only university hospital in southern New Jersey and hence receives a large number of tertiary referral patients.
- A chief of medicine, deputy chair for education and research, and program directors who are known nationally for research, clinical skills and commitment to teaching.
- Innovative educational programs like the OSCE for Clinical-Ethical Ability, Music in Medicine, and Literature and Medicine.
Ambulatory Care Experience
Ambulatory care experience is provided in numerous elective opportunities and at many primary care offices. All medical house officers spend one half-day per week in our outpatient faculty primary care offices with additional primary care blocks.
In the faculty outpatient offices, residents become part of a true private practice and are exposed to the business and office management aspects of patient care.
Further ambulatory experience occurs in outpatient block electives in the Camden County Sexually Transmitted Disease, HIV & TB Clinics, and Adolescent Medicine and subspecialty outpatient offices. We also participate in the web-based Johns Hopkins ambulatory care curriculum.
The Night Float System
It is our strong belief that to really get a good night’s sleep, house officers should sleep at home. Cooper was one of the first hospitals in the region to institute a night float system. Our system allows our house officers to have uninterrupted sleep at home during most nights throughout the year. We now have night float systems for the floor, ICU and CCU rotations.
The Research Experience
All of our categorical residents participate in research/ scholarly activity supervised by a member of the faculty. The Cooper Research Institute was established to coordinate all basic and clinical research as well as education related to human and animal research at our campus. The presence on our campus of the affiliated Coriell Institute for Medical Research allows access to and involvement in a world-class research facility. Many of our house officers present their research projects at regional and national meetings, as well as at Cooper’s yearly research competition.
Conferences
Highlights of the teaching at our institute include:
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A conference schedule that includes resident morning report, attending rounds, and year-round didactic conferences, based on the science, art and business of medicine. Other conferences include Grand Rounds, Chief’s Rounds, EKG conference, real-time EBM seminars, MKSAP Questions, core curriculum lectures, monthly Morbidity & Mortality-QI/QA, Journal Club and multiple subspecialty conferences.
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An Evidence-Based Medicine initiative in which senior residents develop and hone their skills in real-time bedside EBM.
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All of our residents are given instruction in basic and advanced life support. Advanced trauma life support and pediatric advanced life support training are also available. In addition, instruction in computer searching of the medical literature is available and encouraged.
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A board review course is provided for senior residents to prepare for certification by the American Board of Internal Medicine.
Global Health Elective
The global health initiative allows residents to participate in and learn about the health care system in Ghana. It is funded by International Healthcare Volunteers Inc. (IHCV), a non-profit organization that provides free healthcare to women and their families in underserved areas, as well as education for healthcare providers abroad. Cooper Internal Medicine residents, along with residents and attendings from obstetrics and gynecology, general surgery, emergency medicine and pediatrics, spend two weeks in Ghana, seeing patients in inpatient and outpatient settings.
Sim Man
Cooper has a Simulation Laboratory that facilitates training in both cognitive and procedural skills in a non-patient environment. Sim Man is a full body, adult male mannikin that allows the simulation of basic and advanced life support skills and assessment to develop inidual cognitive and team skills. Training scenarios allow repetition of acute crisis situations to allow the learner to acquire skills, and allow the instructor to document competency. This training helps residents to learn intensive care unit scenarios and ACLS and BLS skills in real time in a non-patient environment.
Medical Humanities Courses
Cooper University Hospital has been a leader in exploring the use of literature and music as a tool to help instruct residents in the medical humanities. We have a very successful literature and medicine course, funded by a grant from the Arnold P. Gold Foundation and the New Jersey Council for the Humanities. We also have an innovative music in medicine elective developed by the Division Head of Medical Education.
Fundamental Critical Care Support Course
The Society of Critical Care Medicine, led by Cooper’s Dr. Dellinger, created a Fundamental Critical Care Support (FCCS) Course that is now taught world-wide. The course is given to all Internal Medicine house officers during the first few months of internship. It prepares them for the intensive care unit, focusing on the first 24 hours of management and sudden deteriorations of the critically ill patient. Skills learned during morning didactic lectures are put into practice during afternoon interactive stations. This course has been given to thousands of trainees in dozens of countries and the text has been translated into 7 languages.
Systems-Based Practice
Given the complexities of modern health care delivery systems, the ever-changing systems of medical insurance, and the resulting needs to understand documentation and billing while assuring patient safety and health care quality, an effective curriculum on systems-based practice is essential. The participation of house officers in this elective enhances their understanding of the quality assessment and insurance process and contributes to the improvement of systemic problems in the delivery of care. The residents attend designated hospital meetings; complete required reading and testing; attend various billing and coding courses; and work closely with hospital administrators. They are also required to complete a project that affects practice at our institution. This can be a root cause analysis of an adverse event, a quality improvement project, or a failure mode effects analysis.
Resident as Teacher Curriculum
Recognizing the importance of senior residents in the education of interns, medical students, and their peers, the program has developed a formal Resident as Teacher (RAT) curriculum. This curriculum is incorporated into the real-time clinical care on the wards and is supplemented by formal didactic sessions. It covers a range of topics, including team leadership, bedside teaching, leading effective rounds, and giving and receiving feedback. These themes were chosen based on a needs analysis and specific resident requests. Resident-led work rounds are frequently observed by senior medical educators, after which residents are provided with brief and focused feedback designed to foster leadership and management skills that would otherwise not be addressed in any formal curriculum.
Fellowship in Advanced Hospital Medicine
The fellowship in Advanced Hospital Medicine is a one-year non-ACGME program designed to provide the trainees with experience in inpatient medicine and healthcare delivery as a clinical educator, administrator and researcher. Our curriculum provides trainees with the foundation to become leaders in Hospital Medicine. The fellowship includes involvement in medical education, patient safety, medical ethics, quality improvement and utilization management. Fellows get hands-on experience in directing clinical care on teaching, non-teaching, consult and palliative care services. The curriculum is tailored to each fellow’s goals and includes the development of a research project. Applicants must board-eligible/certified in internal medicine.
Information Technology Tools
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Full-text online access for more than 1600 journals from UMDNJ-RWJMS available 24 hours a day
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Johns Hopkins web-based ambulatory curriculum
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A well-equipped conference room
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Digital radiology on every floor
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EPIC for patient orders and lab systems
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A web-based ethics and professionalism curriculum
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Web-based procedure logging, duty hours documentation and evaluation
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On-site biostatistician support for research projects
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The Resident Electronic Signout System (RESS), a copyrighted program developed by one of our past Chief Medical Residents
Categorical Program Schedule
Residents are given progressively increased medical responsibilities throughout the three years of training, preparing them well for subspecialty training or primary care practice.
Preliminary Year
Six preliminary year positions in medicine are offered to prepare residents for training in other non-medicine specialties. The year is structured similarly to the Categorical PGY-1 year, but with more elective time.
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Contact Information
Director: Vijay Rajput, M.D., FACP
Associate Program Directors: Elizabeth Cerceo, M.D., FACP, Andres Ferber, M.D., Brian Gable, M.D.,
Anna Headly, M.D., MFA, Antoinette Spevetz, M.D., FCCM, FACP
Contact: Medical Education Office
Phone: 856 - 757 - 7842
Fax: 856 - 968- 9587
Email: IMresidency@cooperhealth.edu
Address: Cooper University Hospital, UMDNJ– Robert Wood Johnson Medical School at Camden,
401 Haddon Avenue, E&R Building, 3rd Floor, Camden, NJ 08103
