Rutgers Health
65 Bergen St
Newark, NJ 07103
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Institution
65 Bergen St
Newark, NJ 07103
TOMS RIVER - Community Medical Center's leaders on Wednesday inaugurated the first class of residents in the hospital's 60-year history, placing long white coats over their shoulders and urging them to practice medicine with compassion.
The ceremony put a stamp on Community's new designation as a teaching hospital. And it marked the next step for a group that graduated from medical school under the strain of a global pandemic.
"It's a very surreal feeling," Dr. Amanda Chajkowski, 26, of Syracuse, New York, said after the event. " And I think that I can hopefully speak for the rest of my class saying that we're all so humbled and honored to be here today, and getting a long coat is something we've all been looking forward to, for some of us, 10, 15 years."
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Community Medical Center, an acute-care hospital with 592 beds and 2,500 employees, will have a total of 27 residents in internal medicine, emergency medicine and podiatry.
The group joins a staff that has been tested during the past year by a pandemic that has killed more than 2,000 Ocean County residents and exposed vast disparities in the nation's health care system.
"You have been chosen out of literally thousands of applicants, and I'll tell you why you've been chosen," said Dr. Nicole Maguire, program director of emergency medicine. "Because you all have certain qualities. And they include leadership, integrity, endurance and ambition."
"You can teach the basics of medicine to anybody," she said. "What you can't teach them is how to lead. You can't teach them how to show compassion and empathy."
Residency training has been mythologized in popular culture through TV shows like "Grey's Anatomy," with characters who are sleep-deprived and overwhelmed.
The program comes after students graduate from medical school. During that time, residents treat patients with oversight from attending physicians, gradually gaining more responsibility before becoming eligible for a medical license.
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Community attracted medical school graduates from as far away as Turkey and India who landed here after a matching process that took into account the preferences of both the hospital and the residents themselves.
Dr. Karalee Bluhm, 32, slipped on her long white coat and began her emergency room residency — a schedule that ensures she gets enough sleep, but also includes 12-hour days on most weekends.
A native of Albuquerque, New Mexico, Bluhm worked as a paramedic before deciding to take the next step in the profession and become a doctor. She surprised herself when she was accepted to American University of Antigua in the Caribbean.
During her final year of medical school, some of her clinical rotations were canceled due to COVID. So she wound up living in no fewer than eight states, piecing together the electives she needed to graduate.
Bluhm interviewed for her residency at six hospitals before she was matched with Community. And she gravitated to emergency medicine.
"I wanted to be that calm in the storm," she said. "And this is the biggest storm we've had, this pandemic, so I was excited to get to be a part of it."
The residency program at Community marked a milestone. The hospital was approved by the American College of Graduate Medical Education as a teaching hospital, and it spent millions to renovate a floor for the residents and to hire faculty, said Patrick Ahearn, chief executive officer.
Ahearn said he wanted to attract a new generation of medical school students who could bring energy and curiosity to the hospital — and stay after the program ends to improve the region's quality of health care.
"If you're going to teach somebody, you really need to be on top of your game," Ahearn said.
The residents gathered in an auditorium for the ceremony, their friends and family watching on Zoom, to replace the short white coats they wore in medical school with long white coats.
The new coats were both practical and symbolic.
They had plenty of pockets to store patient information, medical research and a stethoscope. And they were a rite of passage, carrying with them an air of authority, said Dr. Meika Neblett, chief medical and academic officer.
Speakers were quick to remind the residents to be humble, treat nurses well and understand that medicine is as much art as science.
"Sometimes when (it seems) there is nothing else that we can do, there is plenty we can do," said Dr. John Bonamo, executive vice president of RWJBarnabas Health, Community Medical Center's parent company. "Not what we learned in our books, but what we have in our hearts."
As the ceremony ended, Amanda Chajkowski's residency in internal medicine was underway.
Chajkowski said she always had a knack for science and math. And she enjoyed playing sports and being part of a team. She decided to become a doctor — a profession that would include all of those elements.
She attended medical school at St. George's University in Grenada and carried out her clinical rotation at hospitals in New Jersey and New York during the pandemic, at times reminding herself not to get discouraged; the pandemic would end one day.
She wanted to stay in the Northeast. And she was drawn to Community after seeing the excitement the staff had about its new residency program.
What awaits her?
"I think that there's a lot of unknown," Chajkowski said. "And I think that we're going to be kind of on the frontlines learning just as the rest of the world is, as we kind of go about this and try to figure out how to get out of this pandemic."
"And I think we're going to be learning just as our (attending physicians) who have been doing this for 40 years. We're probably going to be learning at the same rate. So it's exciting. But also, it's a lot to take on. There’s a lot to do. There’s a lot to learn."
Michael L. Diamond is a business reporter who has been writing about the New Jersey economy and health care industry for more than 20 years. He can be reached at .