Family Medicine Residency

Having a smaller (5-5-5) program allows for us to form close bonds, making us a “work family.” We have a much larger number of faculty compared to the number of residents, so each resident receives individualized attention through advisor pairings, fellowship tracks, and overall better accessibility to attending physicians.

As residents, we see our patients in the same office as our attendings—Family Medicine at Monument Square. This means that the faculty and residents see patients side-by-side, which is a definite strength of our program. The patients at Family Medicine at Monument Square are a diverse group and represent our community in many ways.

• Age: We care for all ages from newborns to the elderly. We even provide prenatal care to our pregnant patients and continue newborn care after delivery.
• Ethnicity: The New Brunswick area is very racially diverse and our practice reflects that. We often have residents who speak other languages (e.g., Spanish, Chinese, Hindi, Polish, etc) and connect very well with some of our patient populations whose native language is not English.
• Socioeconomic status: We care for patients who have many different types of insurance—private, Medicare, Medicaid—as well as self-pay patients. We have rotations at a Federally Qualified Health Center (FQHC) and organize community outreach programs for the local uninsured/undocumented population.

This diversity exposes us to the breadth of health issues we will encounter as family physicians.

Our Family Medicine inpatient care is at one hospital—Robert Wood Johnson University Hospital in New Brunswick, New Jersey, a level 1 trauma center. Our Family Medicine service admits patients who receive their outpatient care at our continuity clinical site Family Medicine at Monument Square. Therefore, we have continuity for all our patients by being able to take care of them in both outpatient and inpatient settings. This allows us to focus on making sure the transitions between in-hospital and out-of-hospital care go smoothly. Also, we evaluate and admit students from the nearby Rutgers University who come to the ED and are cared for on the Family Medicine Service.

That’s a tough question to answer because the residents who graduate here do so many different things—private outpatient practices, academic medicine, fellowships, hospitalist groups, policy and government work, industry or research, and others. Another strength of the program is that residents who train here are not molded into one type of doctor. The residency faculty work hard to personalize our experiences and help us reach our individualized career goals.

Because there are so many possibilities in family medicine, our program has Fellowship Tracks for residents who want more exposure to a sub-specialty area that falls within the scope of family medicine. These can provide great training opportunities during our second or third year in a variety of areas—Community Health, Sports Medicine, Reproductive Health, and Geriatrics. About half of the residents participate in the Fellowship Track program.

Community Health

The Community Health Track is designed for motivated residents who are committed to improving access and delivery of quality health care to the underserved. Participants will be provided with additional hands-on clinical and administrative experience working in a local urban Federally Qualified Health Center (FQHC) under the mentorship of the medical director.

Sports Medicine

The Sports Medicine Fellowship Track provides residents with a longitudinal experience focused on treatment of the athlete. Residents are assigned to a local high school to provide sideline football coverage for team home games. Sideline coverage for collegiate sporting events is also available. Outpatient clinic experiences range from high school training rooms, collegiate sports medicine with Division I teams, and primary care sports medicine. The goal of the track is to expose residents to the wide array of medical care provided by Primary Care Sports Medicine physicians and prepares interested residents for acceptance into competitive fellowships.

Reproductive Health

The Reproductive Health Fellowship Track (RHT) provides residents with advanced training in full spectrum women’s health, with an emphasis on family planning, provision of long-acting reversible contraception, first trimester abortion care and miscarriage management. Residents participate in additional Women’s Health Sessions at Family Medicine at Monument Square and will develop competency in outpatient procedures such as IUD and Nexplanon insertion/removals, manual vacuum aspiration for abortion and miscarriage, 1st trimester ultrasound for pregnancy dating and localization, and colposcopy. RHT Residents actively manage and treat family medicine patients experiencing ectopic pregnancy and miscarriage patients under the supervision of the RHEDI (Reproductive Health Education Family Medicine) Faculty. Residents also spend approximately 1 day per month with Rutgers Family Medicine faculty at Planned Parenthood, where they develop skills in 1st trimester abortion, ultrasound, and contraception provision.

Geriatrics

The Geriatrics Fellowship Track provides selected residents with an opportunity to gain more advanced skills in promoting healthy aging, performing cognitive assessments, managing acute and chronic conditions, and providing end of life care for elderly patients at the Center for Healthy Aging at Parker Stonegate, the Center for Healthy Aging at Monroe, and on home visits.

Addiction Medicine 

The Addiction Medicine fellowship track is a tailored experience designed to prepare residents to better provide evidence-based care for substance use disorders both in primary care, specialty practice, and especially to participate in a formal post-residency addiction medicine fellowship. Residents will have the opportunity to, if they prefer, select a substance class to focus their training throughout the track. Residents are paired with Dr. Mark Versella, a clinical psychologist who specializes in treating addiction, as their faculty mentor, and work with Dr. Versella to select tailored outpatient and inpatient rotation sites both at Robert Wood Johnson University Hospital, as well as experts throughout the tristate medical community. Residents will also have the opportunity to be paired with scholars at Rutgers University and beyond to develop a better understanding of cutting-edge addiction science.

Dermatology 

The Dermatology Track is designed for Family Medicine residents who are interested in gaining more exposure and training in diagnosing and treating skin disorders. Family Medicine providers are the first to help patients who present with skin concerns and thus should be equipped with tools to treat most uncomplicated skin conditions. Through this track, residents will work with Dr. Truss at FMMS during her skin focused clinic sessions and Dr. Pappert and her colleagues at Rutgers Dermatology. Residents will have exposure to routine skin cancer screenings which may also include procedures such as biopsies along with diagnosing and treating common disorders such as acne, dermatitis, keloids, cutaneous infections, and hair loss amongst many others.

Faculty Development fellowships

*Participation in the Residency Fellowship track program is not required, and does not guarantee a position in the Fellowship after graduation.

Because we have a “Night Float” rotation, the only time that our in-patient service needs on-call coverage is between Friday night and Sunday morning. On average, we are on-call for our FM service about once a month. On a few of our specialty rotations, we do take overnight call since we function on that team just like one of that service’s residents (typically one weekend day per two-week block at the most).

Our “Night Float” system consists of working a shift overnight on our Family Medicine Inpatient Service for two-weeks at a time with the weekends being off. The resident on Night Float works with the on-call attending physician at night and with the day team to coordinate around-the-clock care for our patients. This maximized continuity of care for our patients compared to a traditional “on-call” system and gives us valuable experience in learning how to handle urgent phone calls from patients, nursing homes, hospital units, and the emergency department.

An "opposed" residency program is one that has other residency programs from other specialties at the same hospital, whereas an “unopposed” residency program does not typically have other residents at the same hospital. Most programs at university hospitals are considered “opposed.” There are up-sides and potential down-sides to both types of training sites that differ based on your preferences and learning styles. At our program, we find it really helpful to work side-by-side with residents in other programs for rotations like pediatrics, surgery, neurology, emergency medicine, etc. We get to learn with and from these peers AND we get to learn directly from fellows and attending physicians in a wide variety of specialties. As a group of Family Medicine residents, we have a well-established presence at Robert Wood Johnson University Hospital and are considered assets to the various teams we rotate with. We also have our own Family Medicine Inpatient Service at the Hospital where we work directly with our Family Medicine attendings to care for our very ill patients who we see in our outpatient clinical site.

Four weeks of vacation each year (typically divided in two separate two week blocks off) as well as a handful of personal days and compensation for holidays we work.

A great thing about the New Brunswick area is that there are numerous options for housing depending on what you're looking for. Renting or buying, urban or suburban—it's all available around New Brunswick. With a train station a block away and easy access to Routes 18, 27, 287, 1, 130, and the New Jersey Turnpike, commuting is also very manageable. Our residents live anywhere from walking distance from the hospital to 30 minutes away by car.

Our inpatient and outpatient sites both use the Epic electronic health record that is integrated with the entire RWJBarnabas Health system and Rutgers Health system. We conduct telehealth services to patients through this system for appropriate patients. Epic also allows us to conduct quality improvement projects with fast, accurate data to monitor impact of changes. We also have remote interpreter services available for patients who are not comfortable conducting visits in English.