Welcome to the Cooper Neurology Residency Program! We are very proud of our residents and excited to showcase the opportunity we offer. We hope this website will provide a snapshot of what our program is all about: great training, with a wonderful group of people, where we prioritize the care of our patients and the wellness of our team.
We have increased to 6 residents per year in 2024, which has given us the chance to offer better educational options, and continuously improve the quality of training for our residents. A few key recent changes were the addition of a night float system, an afternoon/evening swing resident dedicated to consults (the BEAST - between am/pm shifts team member) and the ongoing adjustment on the amount of inpatient, outpatient rotations and electives.
Our world-renowned chairman Dr. Jovin is extremely committed to the residency program and training. He has led successful recruitment in the department and made Cooper Neuroscience Institute a regional hub for comprehensive Neurological care. In addition, his efforts have led to many clinical trials and research projects at Cooper. He was key in implementing acute stroke and neurointerventional suite, making Cooper only few comprehensive stroke centers in the world with thrombectomy care in the emergency room.
As a result, residents get comprehensive and well-rounded training in inpatient and outpatient aspects of Neurology. Residents also get hands-on opportunity in various neurocritical care procedures, NCS/EMG, imaging guided lumbar puncture, botulinum toxin injections, nerve blocks, and exposure to neuroendovascular procedures. In addition to bedside teaching by our passionate faculty, we have comprehensive didactics for residents.
We are lucky to be in Camden and so close to Philadelphia (12 min drive or 15 min subway ride to center city). This gives us the rich cultural opportunities of our major city, and the diverse population of inner-city Camden, Philadelphia itself, and the south jersey suburbs. We are the major tertiary care center for South Jersey and therefore we receive all the common pathologies so important to a neurology training; but also, the more complex cases transferred from local hospitals.
Being a resident is hard work anywhere. While good training needs to provide a certain amount of clinical exposure, we also focus on the wellness of our trainees and faculty. Cooper offers two days of wellness. We turned those two days into two weeks of a “reading and wellness” elective to allow time to decompress, remind residents to care for their own health (you need a PCP too) and read. We also just started a wellness committee of resident driven events with funding from the department.
Our ideal candidate is hard working, with great work ethics, loves neurology (more like obsessed about it) and team conscious. We want someone that will look out for their teammates and be conscious about helping each other. We value our residents and take pride in the training you will have.
| Olga Thon, MD Program Director |
Pratit Patel, MD Associate Program Director |