Emergency Medicine Residency Program

Welcome to our Emergency Medicine Residency program at Hackensack University Medical Center!  Our program is an ACGME three year program with 36 residents and 40 faculty located in northern New Jersey, 15 minutes from New York City.

Here you will experience the highest acuity and diversity of Emergency patients in the country.  We are the academic flagship hospital of a 17 hospital network, known nationally for setting standards in Emergency Medicine practice.

As the founding Residency Program Director, I’m so proud of our warm culture and how much our faculty care about every resident’s growth and development.

Our educational Mission is to develop our students, residents and faculty to deliver the highest quality of care for all through these strategies:

• Embrace and model our professional reverence for the human condition, empathy toward suffering, excellence in medical care, and humility in service;
• Continue to serve and learn from the engagement of underrepresented minority populations among students, faculty, staff, and community;
• Integrate lifelong learning and inquiry into our practice;
• Work in communion with other disciplines to integrate their perspectives, experiences, and tools; and
• Understand that context, community, and behavior drive wellbeing.

Our residency program creates an educational experience based on our department’s Core Values:

• Excellence – We will strive to ensure that our work is of the highest possible quality.
• Innovation – We will strive to create new and unique solutions or methods to enhance care delivery.
• Accountability – We will accept responsibility for the quality of our work.
• Engagement – We will be passionate about our jobs and committed to the success of the program.
• Empathy – We will strive to understand what others are experiencing and treat others with compassion.
• Equity – We will strive to treat others with fairness and impartiality.

Thank you for your consideration of our program!

Best,

Doug Finefrock, D.O.
Vice-Chair & Founding Residency Program Director

Our residency curriculum emphasizes direct emergency department time and increased critical care exposure. Clinical rotations outside the Emergency Department account for 25% of the residency. Required rotations are: pediatrics intensive care unit, anesthesiology, obstetrics and gynecology, toxicology, surgical intensive care unit, and medical intensive care unit, and elective.

The first month of residency will consist of a month-long orientation. During this period, the residents will be informed of all their assignments and duties in detail. They will also be oriented on the goals and objectives for each year of training as well as the rotation specific goals and objectives for each assignment. There are orientation shifts scheduled throughout the month in the Emergency Department and with EMS.

Residents will spend two months off site to round out their experience. Our toxicology rotation is at the New York Poison Control Center in downtown Manhattan during second year. You may also rotate at New Jersey Poison Control Center in Newark, NJ. During their third year, residents spend one month at our community site, Englewood Hospital & Medical Center.

In 3 years of residency you will have 6 weeks of elective time to explore different interests in Emergency Medicine. Many residents have done pediatric airway, flight medicine, radiology, cardiology, research, pharmacology and international electives. We have established a relationship through our mobile hospital program in St. Croix and many residents have spent their third year elective doing community medicine on the island.

Located just 8 miles west of Manhattan, Hackensack University Medical Center is a nonprofit teaching and research hospital that is the largest provider of healthcare services in the state of New Jersey with 775 inpatient beds. It is a Level II Trauma Center that sees more than 112,000 patients per year and admits nearly 1,300 trauma patients per year from the Emergency and Trauma Center (ETC). Annually, more than 36,000 patients visit the Pediatric Emergency Department. Hackensack University Medical Center is also a Stroke Center and a STEMI catherization center with full cardiothoracic surgical capabilities. Hackensack University Medical Center has been named one of America’s 50 Best Hospitals by Healthgrades for nine years in a row placing it in the top one percent nationally. You will also see our emergency medicine physicians on the sidelines of the New York Giants football games since our medical center is the hometown hospital for the New York Giants.

In May 2012 we broke ground to renovate the ETC that will include 75 private rooms for our patients. The new ETC features specialty-specific wings including Geriatrics, Oncology, Cardiology and Trauma care. Our patient population represents a wide range of cultural diversity with patients of all ages, presenting complaints and acuities. The combination of a thriving, nationally recognized academic institution with a large, diverse volume of patients offers emergency medicine residents an excellent training opportunity.

The Department of Emergency Services is run under the direction of Joseph Underwood, M.D, chairman and Kevin Hewitt, M.D, vice chairman and Doug Finefrock, D.O., vice chairman and founding residency program director. As a Regional Trauma Center, there are also attending surgeons specializing in trauma present around the clock. In addition to the physicians, the team comprises staff in the fields of nursing, respiratory care, technicians, consumer affairs; clerical and other support staff, as well as an extensive network of specialists, including plastic surgeons.

Beyond the main ETC treatment areas for adults, there are separate areas and staff for:

Pediatric Emergency Medicine
Hackensack University Medical Center has a Mobile Intensive Care Unit with locations throughout Bergen County, and coordinates the County Mobile Intensive Care Communications Network.

Residents also rotate at Englewood Hospital & Medical Center on their Community Emergency Medicine rotation. This allows the residents to have progressive responsibility in patient management and experience in the transfer of patients requiring subspecialty care. It provides them with a community Emergency Medicine experience with limited specialty services that is similar to the many community set

Off Shore Elective – St Croix, USVI

Our residency has a well-established optional full block elective for our PGY-3’s on the Caribbean island of St Croix, United States Virgin Islands.   Residents work in the Emergency Department of Governor Juan F Luis Hospital, the only hospital on the island of 50,000 people. Our relationship with the hospital started in 2018 with the deployment of our mobile medical assets there to help after extensive hurricane damage.

The experience our residents have gained on St Croix is truly unique and most importantly they are helping the people of St Croix. As opposed to a large academic medical center with many specialists and trauma teams readily available, the Emergency Medicine physicians there are responsible for considerably more aspects of overall care. When necessary patients can be flown to San Juan, Puerto Rico or Miami, Florida after stabilization. Many of our graduates who have completed the rotation have reported the experience was extremely valuable when starting their careers, especially if in smaller community hospitals.

While residents are responsible for their own travel and living expenses, The Buccaneer Hotel (www.thebuccaneer.com) and Hertz car rental have been extremely generous because our residents are helping the people of St Croix. Climate on the island is summer like year round, no passport is required, residents are United States citizens, currency is dollars, and English is the predominate language.

Pharmacology: Work with residency-trained ED pharmacists who assist the emergency department with tailored prescription of medications. By the end of the rotation, you will feel comfortable with the many nuances and side effects of commonly prescribed medications in the emergency department.

Hawaii: Work in a unique and beautiful practice setting while engaging the local community in maintaining good health. Rotators will gain confidence in a practice setting that is more resource-limited than HUMC. In particular, residents have enjoyed a high degree of autonomy and the variation in chief complaints.

Teaching: At the heart of academic medicine is the aspiration to be better and to help teach others. During this rotation, residents have the opportunity to supervise medical students and residents during procedures and help assist in challenging cases. In doing so, you will gain confidence in your own abilities to practice independently.

Administrative: This elective is ideal for residents interested in the management of a busy emergency department or for those considering an administrative fellowship. You will work closely with physicians and administrators and assist in effecting change to make the department more efficient.

Anesthesia: For residents looking for additional practice with airway management, an anesthesia elective is possible. You will work alongside anesthesia attendings to hone your intubation and resuscitative skills.

Radiology: Interpreting emergent radiographic studies is a core competency in emergency medicine. During a radiology elective, residents work closely with board-certified radiologists to gain confidence with interpretation and clinical correlation of common imaging findings.