Rutgers Health-New Jersey Medical School Program

Program Identity & Fit

Rutgers NJMS is a university-based, five-year orthopaedic surgery program anchored at University Hospital, Newark's state-designated Level I trauma center, and supplemented by rotations across four community-based sites (Overlook, Hackensack, Newark Beth Israel, and Staten Island University Hospital), giving residents graduated exposure from high-acuity multiply-injured trauma to community practice orthopaedics. Research is structurally embedded rather than peripheral: residents complete a dedicated two-month PGY-3 research block within a department that runs molecular, biomechanical, and biochemical laboratories staffed by biomedical engineers and hard-tissue histologists, with basic science trainees integrated into weekly resident education. The program is explicitly fellowship-oriented, with roughly 90% of recent graduates matching into subspecialty fellowships (hand, sports, trauma, oncology, spine, joint reconstruction) at recognized academic centers, while still preparing the remaining graduates for private practice. Distinctive features include a highly structured six-rotation-per-year block schedule, an OrthoBullets-based year-long reading curriculum, service-specific weekly conferences (oncology tumor board, trauma morning report, pediatric/spine/hand journal clubs), and late-residency subspecialty focus rotations (e.g., dedicated adult joint/hip reconstruction at Staten Island under a fellowship-trained joint surgeon).