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 long-standing commitment as primary caregivers to children in 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 behavioral pediatrics, endocrinology, gastroenterology, genetics, infectious diseases, neonatology, neurology, pulmonary medicine, and psychiatry. Pediatric surgical subspecialties include adolescent gynecology, craniofacial surgery, general pediatric surgery, ophthalmology, otolaryngology, and plastic and reconstructive surgery.
Other departments within the hospital with pediatric subspecialists include anesthesiology, physical and rehabilitative medicine, radiology, and emergency medicine.
A pediatric residency at Cooper 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 NJ 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 Level I Trauma Center is the only state-designated trauma center for southern New Jersey and the only trauma center in the region verified as a Pediatric Trauma Center by the American College of Surgeons. We are also one of only two regional perinatal centers in the seven southern-most counties of New Jersey.
Our current inpatient facilities include 56 neonatal/infant beds: 23 in the intensive care nursery, 12 in the intermediate care nursery, and 24 for newborns who room in with their mothers. In addition, there are 38 beds for children: 32 for general pediatric medical and surgical care and six for pediatric intensive care.
Our current outpatient facilities include four 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 locations in Burlington and Washington Township are primary care facilities.
One of the goals of our medical education program is to expose our residents to a diversity of experience. Our faculty’s 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 35 percent 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 faculty's ongoing quality improvement and research projects. We also encourage mentoring relationships between our residents and medical students. As the clinical campus of Cooper Medical School of Rowan University, 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 categorical pediatric residency positions, eight each at the PGY-1, PGY-2, and PGY-3 levels.