Leadership Messages (Anesthesiology)
Thank you for your interest in our Anesthesiology Residency Program. Our program is a fully accredited, integrated, four-year program. We are a close department that prides itself on providing a supportive atmosphere conducive to learning in a variety of clinical and didactic settings. With a focus on professionalism, collaboration, and teamwork, our residents develop into physicians who are prepared for leadership roles in the academic and private practice setting.
Cooper University Health Care is a Level I Trauma Center located in Camden, New Jersey. Recent expansions to the health system include MD Anderson Cancer Center at Cooper, a state of the art cancer center.
Faculty achievements include publications, research accomplishments, and regional and national speaking engagements. Year after year our faculty is represented at the American Society of Anesthesiologists and the New Jersey Society of Anesthesiologists Annual meetings. We have a diverse faculty from various educational backgrounds and experience in the private practice sector.
At Cooper, we place patient and family-centered care above all else. Our physicians are part of a multi-disciplinary group practice caring for patients with complex illnesses, combining their expertise to determine the most effective treatments. In addition to academic achievements, our faculty is clinically strong, providing the residency group with outstanding instruction in TEE, ultrasound guided regional anesthesia, leading edge critical care experience, simulation, and a top-level chronic pain experience.
Over the past several years, we have been successful in filling our residency with exceptional candidates. We currently train four residents per year, and our residents have achieved the incredible feat of a 97% board pass rate. Residents can choose to be involved in research and are offered the opportunity to publish. Approximately 50% of our residents go onto fellowship positions.
At Cooper, we pay strict attention to the ACGME defined work hours and closely monitor our resident duty hours. The average hours worked by residents per week are CBY: 51, CA1: 52, CA2: 52, and CA3: 52.5.
These are just a few of the highlights of our program that I hope you will consider as you make your decision.
Irwin Gratz, DO
Residency Program Director
Professor of Anesthesiology
Gratz-Irwin@CooperHealth.edu
Thank you for your interest in the Anesthesiology Residency Program at Cooper Medical School of Rowan University (CMSRU)/Cooper University Health Care (CUHC). The Anesthesia Residency Program, fully accredited by the ACGME, started in 2004 and is led by our Program Director, Dr. Irwin Gratz, and our Associate Program Director, Dr. Keyur Trivedi. Our residents enjoy both excellent clinical training and formal didactic instruction. We are proud of our high board pass rate and 100 percent match rate.
As the largest academic medical center in southern New Jersey, our residents are exposed to myriad of clinical anesthesia experiences, including those for Trauma Surgery, Cardiac Surgery, Pediatric Surgery, Obstetric/Gynecological Surgery, Pain Management, Vascular Surgery, Thoracic Surgery, Robotic Surgery, Neurosurgery, Ambulatory Surgery, Orthopedic Surgery, Critical Care, and many others. Our clinical efforts are led by Dr. Ronak Desai who serves as our Vice Chair of Clinical Affairs. The diversity and acuity of clinical presentations and clinical needs of our patients provides a wonderful training environment for our residents. Residents are first oriented to the operating room through a deliberate immersion process that involves being paired with a senior resident for two months. Residents gradually gain clinical autonomy in a structured and supervised fashion.
Our formal didactic educational program at Cooper is excellent. CA-1 Residents benefit from an extensive introductory lecture series, especially designed for them. Regularly occurring formal didactic sessions continue throughout the training experience, featuring Case Management, Morbidity and Mortality, Journal Club, Mock Oral Reviews, Interdisciplinary Lectures, and Grand Rounds. Our educational efforts are strengthened by our MOCA-certified SIM Lab, where residents have the benefit of working with Anesthesia Faculty members that are nationally recognized SIM Lab experts. In fact, our Vice Chair of Faculty Affairs, Dr. Amanda Burden, is the Director of Simulation Education for both CUHC and CMSRU.
From an academic perspective, our department offers many opportunities. We are a department in the Cooper Medical School of Rowan University, and our entire faculty has academic appointments at the medical school. Our department is completely integrated into the fabric of the school, with our faculty participating in Medical Student Education through the Scholars Workshop Program, the Facilitated Learning Group Program, the College Advisory System, the general Mentorship Program, the Capstone Project Mentoring Program, the SIM Lab, the Graduate Medical Education Committee, and through medical student rotations through our department. Our departmental Vice Chair of Administrative Affairs, Dr. Erin Pukenas, is the Assistant Dean of Student Affairs at CMSRU. Our research efforts are led by Dr. Ludmil Mitrev, who serves as our Division Head of Research, and afford an opportunity for student and resident engagement in scientific inquiry. The department employs a full time Research Director and two full time Research Coordinators. Several of our faculty are ABA Board Examiners, and many hold important positions within national societies of anesthesiology.
We are very pleased that you are considering exploring the opportunity of joining our Residency Program. We feel that our residency experience is very strong from clinical, educational, and academic perspectives. Best of luck!
Alann R. Solina, MD
Professor and Chairman, Department of Anesthesiology, CMSRU
Chief of Anesthesia and Medical Director of Operating Room Services, CUHC
Hi, everyone! Thank you for taking an interest in the Cooper Anesthesiology Residency Program!
Our names are Rachel Moltz and Drew Kaplan and we are Chief Residents, CA3s, and close friends. Rachel is from southern York, PA and attended Lebanon Valley College for undergraduate studies followed by Philadelphia College of Osteopathic Medicine. Drew is from Washington Township, NJ and attended Ramapo College of New Jersey followed by TouroCOM Middletown.
Throughout our medical school rotations we realized that anesthesiology was the best of both medicine and procedural worlds. We loved the hands-on aspects of being in the OR and providing direct patient care combined with critical thinking required to manage patients' physiology, pathology, and/or anatomy in the perioperative period. Ultimately, it showed that anesthesiologists played a key role in caring for patients in a variety of important, vulnerable and/or life-changing events such as undergoing major cardiovascular surgery, life-threatening (or less than) traumas, welcoming babies into the world, etc which we could not wait to be a part of.
We were both thrilled to have matched into Cooper University Hospital Anesthesiology Residency. Cooper is a Level 1 Trauma Center and the only tertiary care hospital of its size in the area and is ranked among the top hospitals both regionally and nationally in nine specialties. Thus, you will experience a wide diversity of cases and take care of a medically complex patient population.
PGY1 year is considered a transitional year due to the combination of both medical and procedural rotations, and it ends with 1 month of anesthesia which effortlessly transitions you into CA1 year. Overall, CA1 year is meant to allow you to build a strong foundation and set you up for success in CA2 year when you are exposed to subspecialties. Then, CA3 year offers you the flexibility to pursue more elective rotations meant to prime you for fellowship, an attending job, or simply to refine your skills in whatever interests you such as regional, outpatient services, TEE, difficult airway, etc. In addition to excellent training at Cooper, we also visit the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia for 2 months CA2 year, and 1 month in CA3 year where we are exposed to truly unique cases and become very comfortable managing children with life-threatening illnesses and injuries.
Learning opportunities are also abundant as there are monthly M&Ms, weekly didactic lectures, journal clubs, and simulation sessions. The attendings care about our education and encourage a positive learning environment. Further, all of the residents work to help each other grow professionally, and we all become close through the years.
We are beyond grateful and honored to be a part of this program. Our emails are moltz-rachel@cooperhealth.edu and kaplan-drew@cooperhealth.edu. We are more than happy to answer any questions!
Sincerely,
Rachel & Drew
The Division of Patient Safety and Quality Clinical Effectiveness is responsible for oversight of the delivery of high quality, safe patient care in anesthesiology. The Division has led the department in achieving excellence in quality metrics related to value-based purchasing and pay-for-performance and has positively contributed to the composite safety scoring of the health system. The division has created clinical and operational efficiency metrics to benchmark and improve upon processes that impact our patient care management and experience. The Division is consistently recognized for its work and commitment to patient safety.
Our residents actively participate in quality projects and engage in principles of Lean/Six Sigma. Our residents are an integral part of our Performance Improvement Committee and over the course of their residency learn about quality reporting, performance review, population health, perioperative surgical home principles and perioperative safety initiatives. All residents work in teams and are required to participate in a quality improvement project for which they have received multiple awards and recognitions.
Our faculty members are leaders in the development and implementation of several safety and quality endeavors, including critical events checklists, cognitive aids designed to improve team performance and patient outcomes and improving perioperative handoff processes. We have been among the first to publish curriculum for resident handoff communication and to successfully execute processes to overcome safety barriers during patient care transitions in the ambulatory setting. Our faculty hold numerous positions in national leadership committees and organizations dedicated to safe patient care, including the Emergency Manual Implementation Collaborative, the Society for Pediatric Anesthesiology, the American Society of Anesthesiology, the National Patient Safety Foundation and the American Board of Anesthesiology.
Erin Pukenas, MD
Vice Chief/Vice Chair for Administrative Affairs
Assistant Dean of Student Affairs, CMSRU