Program Highlights

Family Medicine Residency Program

About Rutgers Health/Robert Wood John University Hospital Somerset

Robert Wood Johnson University Hospital Somerset is a 355-bed nationally accredited, hospital providing comprehensive emergency, medical/surgical and rehabilitative services. Our mission is to deliver high-quality health care services with measurable outcomes to the community we serve. As the only hospital in Somerset County, RWJ Somerset touches every member of the community and provides a cutting-edge, patient-friendly facility that is considered one of the finest in New Jersey.

RWJ Somerset has a staff of 650 board-certified physicians representing all major medical/surgical specialties, including oncology, eating disorders, invasive cardiology, behavioral health, physical rehabilitation, sleep disorders, diabetes management, tobacco dependency treatment and more. RWJ Somerset is fully accredited by The Joint Commission.

Family Practice Center

Located only a few hundred yards from the medical center, our 16,000-square-foot office affords residents convenient accessibility to:

• 18 examination rooms
• two procedure rooms
• a fully operational electronic medical record system
• onsite conference room
• online medical library and resources
• individualized resident office space equipped with personal computers, high speed Internet access, voice mail, and e-mail

Residents follow a panel of continuity patients throughout their three years. During office sessions, residents have the opportunity to perform many office-based procedures, including but not limited to IUD insertions, colposcopy, skin biopsies, endometrial biopsies, joint injections, and skin cryotherapy.

In 2023, there were more than 22,000 patient visits to the office and just under 2000 hospital admissions.

Conference Curriculum

The Family medicine Residency at RWJ Somerset has a robust weekly conference curriculum, including an 18-month recurring lecture series on a variety of topics led by both faculty, community physicians and residents.

Recurring Lectures include:

• Monthly Journal Club
• Medicine and Family Medicine Grand Rounds
• Resident Case Presentations
• Medical Jeopardy
• Resident-led AAFP article and Board review
• Practice Management
• Acupuncture, and musculoskeletal workshops
• Procedure workshops
• First Year of Life series
• Preventive Medicine Lecture series
• Physician Self-Care and Wellness sessions

Family Medicine Maternity

In the spirit of full-scope family medicine, our residents receive robust maternity training. Residents start with a panel of maternity patients in their intern year. There are two obstetricians who teach residents in the office and co-manage our higher-risk patients. We also have three faculty attendings who supervise and provide maternity care. In 2023, residents did almost one-third of the deliveries at RWJ Somerset for a total of 300 resident deliveries.

In addition, our residents receive excellent gynecologic procedural training. Women’s health and gynecologic services are provided on site in the Family Medicine office under the supervision of the OB/GYN and Family Medicine faculty attendings.

Primary Care Sports Medicine

According to the Society of Teachers of Family Medicine 40% of primary care outpatient visits are Musculoskeletal (MSK) concerns. In light of this, our residents receive a comprehensive training in musculoskeletal medicine to increase their comfort in managing MSK complaints as well as providing a more specific diagnosis to our patient population. We have a fellowship trained sports medicine attending in our faculty that helps to create and guide the longitudinal curriculum throughout the 3 years of residency as well as providing additional sports medicine and orthopedic lectures during our dedicated sports medicine and orthopedics months.

Additionally, residents have the opportunity to build and hone their MSK procedural skills and start to get a basic MSK ultrasound understanding. We encourage our residents to be as hands on as possible and are there to motivate and support them along the way.

Community Medicine

RWJ Somerset residents play a role in local health education efforts. Our residents provide medical services at health screenings, volunteer time at the Special Olympics, and do presentations for a variety of community groups.

Residents also go on home visits to our homebound patients in the community, and provide care for geriatric patients in the nursing home.

In 2015, the faculty implemented the Community-Oriented Primary Care Curriculum (COPC), a longitudinal curriculum designed to help residents identify health problems within our community, and provide targeted outreach.

Integrative Medicine

In conjunction with the Andrew Weil Center for Integrative Medicine (AWCIM), our residency offers the Integrative Medicine in Residency (IMR) program, which provides a dynamic, self-paced online Integrative Medicine curriculum specifically designed for medical residents. This 100-hour competency-based CORE program aligns with ACGME guidelines and equips physicians to better address the growing prevalence of chronic illnesses and stress-related disorders. Upon completion, residents receive a Certificate of Completion and gain access to over 85 additional hours of advanced, condition-specific content. The program provides 24-hour access and blends online learning with experiential activities, ensuring flexibility for busy schedules. It also includes a Healthcare Professional Wellbeing Course and incorporates evaluation tools to monitor progress and assess knowledge acquisition.

Additional information is available here.

Resident Wellness

Our resident-led wellness committee meets regularly to plan activities for residents, faculty and staff. Activities have included Trivia Nights, potluck, game nights, apple picking, staff holiday parties, Somerset Patriots baseball games, bowling, and welcome pool parties for our new intern class. The committee also works to integrate wellness activities into the regular lecture schedule as tools for both burnout prevention and patient care.

Each class participates in a yearly residency retreat facilitated by our Behavioral Scientist. Retreats offer each class time to enjoy activities outside of the work environment. Clinical responsibilities are covered by the other classes during retreats to ensure everyone can participate.

Elective and Specialty Rotations

RWJ Somerset encourages residents to explore individual interests through elective opportunities. These opportunities are typically resident-generated, and have included:

• International experiences
• Acupuncture certification
• PROUD Family Health Center
• Sports Medicine
• Obstetrics
• Urgent Care
• Hospitalist medicine
• Palliative Care and Hospice
• Aesthetic Medicine
• Advanced Practice Management
• PGY-3 residents have the opportunity to design an elective experience called the Protected Intensive Elective (PIE) which allows them to be completely away from the residency for one month, or a Local Intensive Elective (LIE), an intensive rotation with reduced office and on-call responsibilities.