Hackensack Meridian Health-Hackensack University Medical Center Program

Program Identity & Fit

This is a newly ACGME-accredited, university-affiliated psychiatry residency at Hackensack University Medical Center, a tertiary-care flagship of the 18-hospital Hackensack Meridian Health network, having transitioned from a track of the Jersey Shore residency into a free-standing program with its first class starting July 2025. The training environment leverages a high-acuity setting (New Jersey's busiest emergency department, a top-ranked pediatric/adolescent behavioral health service at Sanzari Children's Hospital) alongside rotations at the East Orange VA Medical Center and forensic exposure via the Bergen County Prosecutor's Office, giving broad population and systems diversity. The program explicitly supports multiple career endpoints—child/adolescent, addiction, geriatric, forensic, research, academic, private practice, or community psychiatry—with research opportunities, grand rounds, and faculty collaboration available but not positioned as central to program identity. As an inaugural program still building its reputation and culture, it appears to value residents who are collegial, adaptable, and invested in helping shape a growing training environment rather than joining an entrenched legacy structure.