Curriculum

The number that follows each rotation denotes week(s) duration.

Longitudinal Experiences

There are several rotations that are spread out over the course of your three years to optimize continuity of care and learning. These experiences are as follows:

Community Health

Community health is one of the pillars of our residency program, and we strive to integrate our residency into the community to provide consistent and lasting partnerships. Through direct experience working with local community organizations, our residents learn about the needs of our local community, as well as the roles in which physicians are uniquely suited to serve. Residents have worked with organizations such as: Trenton Health Team, which is dedicated to the health and well-being of the greater Trenton community; Homefront, a local organization with a mission to end homelessness; and Family Connects, which seeks to decrease maternal and infant morbidity and mortality by providing in-home postpartum services. Beyond these organizational involvements, our residents also give community health lectures on topics such as healthy aging, provide free cancer screening services through our CEED program, and get involved in local schools offering sports physicals, and putting on STEM and sports medicine workshops.

Geriatrics

Care of the older adult is a marathon not a race. The process of aging occurs over years, and therefore we have built-in exposure to this patient population throughout residency. Roughly 30% of our outpatient office population is geriatric, enabling all residents to have continuity ambulatory experience as primary care physicians throughout residency. Additionally, PGY2s participate in a dedicated geriatrics block for four weeks, during which they provide home visits and care in a skilled nursing facility. In the second and third years, residents gain additional longitudinal experience in geriatrics by attending monthly geriatric rounds for a cohort of patients who reside in a long-term care community.

Procedural Training

With core faculty who are trained in and enthusiastic about a broad array of office-based procedures, we have created a weekly procedure clinic to facilitate continuous procedural training and practice across the years. Commonly performed procedures include: pap/wet mount, long acting reversible contraceptive placement/removal, colposcopy, joint and trigger point injections, skin biopsies, and I&Ds. Residents also receive training in abortion care and point of care ultrasound.

Research

To encourage lifelong learning, our residents are involved in critical evaluation and participation in research throughout residency. Residents regularly appraise recent literature through a monthly journal club, and have protected time for learning, research, and professional development as part of their experience blocks each year. Each resident will graduate with a peer-reviewed publication and/or scholarly presentation with faculty mentorship. Residents also complete quality improvement projects. Recent QI projects have related to prediabetes screening, immunizations, home blood pressure monitoring, lead testing, social determinants of health, and postpartum depression screening. Residents have presented work at conferences such as STFM, and we also host an annual residency research symposium.

Click here to see a list of resident QI projects, presentations and publications.

Health Systems Management (HSM)

HSM prepares residents for the business and system aspect of physician practice and its surrounding effects. The longitudinal fashion of this experience provides residents with time to attend meetings and leadership opportunities throughout their residency. As the resident advances through the years, their exposure will grow with them, starting with basic principles of practice management and advancing to broader system administration within the realm of hospital medicine, patient safety, and quality improvement. At the program level, we have resident-leads on committees for Wellness, Recruitment, Program Evaluation, Community Outreach, and Curriculum Development. At an institutional level, our residents participate in hospital wide committees for RRT and sepsis-response. Residents will ultimately spearhead their own project in areas like quality, patient safety, and population health.

Specialist Clinical Exposure

Our residents work with specialists directly in radiology, surgery, dermatology, rheumatology, tuberculosis clinic, weight loss clinic, wound care, pain management, and a local PACT team (psychiatric home visits). We often have our specialist colleagues present during our weekly didactics.

Didactics

Our didactic curriculum is designed to provide residents with a comprehensive series of lectures in a variety of formats, and can be tailored to different learning styles. Didactics are protected learning time for our residents, taking place on Wednesday afternoons. Each month, the didactic schedule includes a combination of resident, faculty, and specialist-led presentations, case-based discussions, board reviews, OSCEs, simulations and workshops rotating through foundational topics of family medicine, health systems, and skills critical to physicians working today. Our curriculum emphasizes skills in procedural competence and patient counseling. Please see the chart below for an overview of monthly didactic topics.