Family Medicine Residency

Welcome from the Chair

Welcome to JFK’s Family Medicine Department and Residency Program.

This is an exciting time for the Hackensack Meridian JFK University Medical Center Department of Family Medicine as we welcome our new residency program Director, Dr Rosa Mendoza. Dr. Mendoza joined our program in 2019 after completing a Primary Care Clinician Research fellowship and Master’s degree in epidemiology at Columbia University. Before transitioning into the position of residency Director, Dr. Mendoza served as the Family Medicine Clerkship Director for Hackensack Meridian School of Medicine in addition to being a member of our faculty. Given Dr. Mendoza’s background in medical education and research, she is well positioned to guide our residency program through the implementation of the new Family Medicine Residency requirements.

The core of the Department is our Family Medicine Center. Our practice includes the full scope of Family Medicine from prenatal care to Geriatrics. We are an NCQA recognized Patient-Centered Medical Home and a certified Centering Pregnancy prenatal group visit practice. We also have a full time Care Manager to help our high risk patients and a Social Worker to assist our vulnerable patients.

In addition to our residency program we have an active interprofessional student learning environment. We routinely have medical students doing their Family Medicine Clerkships from Hackensack Meridian School of Medicine and St. George’s University School of Medicine. In conjunction with the Rutgers Ernest Mario School of Pharmacy we have an ambulatory care PharmD, Dr. Joseph Walter, PharmD, BCPS, who teaches pharmacy students in our practice. New this year, Dr. Lauren Guth, PsyD, MEd will be supervising a clinical psychologist extern in our office. We also plan to expand our Osteopathic Manipulative Treatment (OMT) curriculum with the addition of our new faculty member, Dr. Nirali Patel, DO.

As you explore our website, we hope you will be excited by our Department’s extensive clinical and educational opportunities and choose to apply to our residency program.

Best of Luck

Welcome from the Program Director

Thank you for your interest in the JFK Family Medicine Residency Program! Our program is well-established and has been training residents since 1976. We are fortunate to be able to serve a patient population, mainly from Middlesex and Union county, that is diverse in many ways including in socioeconomic status, race and ethnicity, health insurance and age distribution. Our mission is to provide compassionate and comprehensive patient care that takes into account the socioeconomic and cultural context of our patients. While we strive to provide each one of our patients and their families with the individualized care that fits their unique challenges, we also value community service and advocacy. We excel in this mission due to the unique strengths of our program.

Our program provides training that is full spectrum and includes outpatient primary care, hospital medicine, reproductive care, prenatal care, obstetrics, sports medicine, osteopathic manipulative treatment and community health. In addition, we consider mental health services and teaching to be an essential part of our program and center. Our behavioral scientist plays an important role in the development of our behavioral health curriculum as well as in providing direct patient care.

From day 1, residents manage their own patient panel at our Family Medicine center, a patient centered medical home composed of a robust multidisciplinary team. We are able to provide our patients with services including social work, pharmacy, and nutrition all within our center. Our center is rich and fosters interdisciplinary relationships among different health professionals, including residents, who work together in quality improvement projects to assess and improve the health of our patients. We value continuity with our patients in the ambulatory setting as well as in the hospital setting, where we care for them on our adult inpatient and newborn services. We also have active subacute rehabilitation and long term care practices as well. While we excel in training strong primary care physicians, we support our residents in their unique clinical interests.

Our program strongly supports the well-being of our residents and stresses the importance of a healthy work-life balance. While we are committed to ensuring that our residents graduate with the strongest clinical skills possible, we also understand the importance of family and life outside of the work environment. We foster this balance by creating a supportive environment within the residency program itself. Celebrations for holidays, birthdays and baby showers are common at our Family Medicine Center. Moreover, residents enjoy outings among themselves. Edison and nearby towns offer a variety of fun activities. Moreover, we are in close proximity to New York City and Philadelphia.

Upon completion of our program, our graduates go on to confidently practice as fellows or directly into practice as primary care physicians, hospitalists, medical educators in rural, suburban, and urban areas. We seek residents who are committed to growing their clinical skills and to providing meaningful patient care. We hope you share our values and invite you to apply to our residency program!