Northern Dutchess Hospital is an 84-bed nonprofit hospital located in Rhinebeck, NY and will serve as a participating clinical training site for the Geriatric Medicine Fellowship Program. Northern Dutchess has made its reputation in the community by providing patients with access to quality, close-to-home care and services in cancer, heart disease prevention, bariatric surgery, and healthy aging services. In addition, Northern Dutchess Hospital also provides services in gastroenterology and digestive health, infectious diseases, infusion therapy, intensive and critical care, nephrology, occupational medicine, orthopaedic care, and rehabilitation services, among others. The hospital, as a part of the Nuvance Health system, has been recognized for its commitment to patient care and healthcare services and has received multiple awards, including the Gold Seal of Approval (2020), a CMS Five Start Rating (2021), and designated by the Surgical Review Corporation (SRC) as a Robotic Center of Excellence. While training at this site, fellows will learn the knowledge and skills necessary to excel as physicians in geriatric medicine and will have the opportunity to work with a variety of healthcare professionals. Fellows will rotate to Northern Dutchess Hospital for Geriatric Core, Research, Long-term Care/Rehabilitation, Mixed Specialty including Wound Care/Orthogeriatric/Urology/Rheumatology, and Elective rotations throughout their time in the one-year program. Fellows will be trained and supervised by licensed and appropriately certified physicians at this participating training site.

SCHEDULE AT A GLANCE:

During the Geriatrics Core rotations, Nuvance Health Geriatric Medicine fellows will act as the primary geriatric consultant during the inpatient service. The fellows will provide consultations for elderly patients in all departments across the hospital including intensive care, emergency medicine, psychiatry, general medicine, and inpatient rehabilitation. Fellows will be responsible for communicating effectively by establishing a therapeutic relationship with the patient and their family. The fellows will be able to communicate the role that they function in while on the consultant interdisciplinary team. In addition, fellows will be responsible for entering consultative notes and discharge summaries (within 24-hours of discharge) into the Electronic Medical Record (EMR). As fellows progress through the one-year fellowship program, they will be granted with increased responsibility and will be expected to take on a larger role in the care and treatment for geriatric patients. They will be responsible for ensuring that all team members have accurate, relevant information regarding patient status, diagnosis, and management plans while serving as the primary geriatric consultant. This experience will help fellows cultivate and maintain proficient interpersonal and communication skills that result in the effective exchange of information and collaboration with patients, families, and other health professionals.

Fellows will do both an Inpatient and Outpatient experience. Inpatient experience will be at Vassar Brothers Medical Center where they have a full Palliative Care inpatient team. Our outpatient experience is through Hudson Valley Hospice, where they have office-based outpatient palliative care consults and full Hospice services that cover the spectrum of care locations including home, hospital and long-term care.

The Mixed Specialty Rotation consists of Wound Care, Orthogeriatric and Urology.

Fellows are provided with 4 weeks of elective time to allow fellows to focus on their own unique educational and learning needs. Electives can include Ambulatory Geriatrics, Rehabilitation, Neurology, Psychiatry, Hospice, Hospice and Palliative Care and Consults. Electives are open to the creativity of the fellow. The elective’s goals and objectives and the elective itself must be reviewed and approved by the Program Director.

Less than 2 miles from Northern Dutchess Hospital is Archcare Ferncliff nursing home. The nursing home has over 300 beds and includes a memory care wing that uses a Montessori Method for dementia care and a Huntingdon’s Chorea unit. Fellows will have a longitudinal experience there and 2 rotations there. On the Northern Dutchess Campus, there is a small subacute rehab facility and an acute rehab unit.

Fellows will have a primary care experience that will be located at Woodland Pond Continuing Care Center in New Paltz, NY. This is an outpatient office that serves the Woodland Pond Community as well as the great surrounding community.

Journal Club will occur every month during the Geriatric Medicine Fellowship. Fellows will choose an article relevant to current patient care scenarios or Geriatric Medicine as a whole and present this article to the group of fellows and faculty. The fellow will then guide a discussion regarding the merit of the research as well as potential implications for patient care.

Weekly lectures throughout the fellowship year will cover the core Geriatric topics. Fellows will be taught but will also be teaching themselves and residents. There will be collaboration with other Fellowship and Residency programs, including Palliative Care and Family Medicine. For their research experience, we will utilize the entire Nuvance Health system for our research projects with many clinical researchers and librarians at our disposal.

The Nuvance Health Geriatric Medicine Fellowship Program at Northern Dutchess Hospital thanks you for your interest in applying to our program. We accept all applications through ERAS only and participate annually in the NRMP Match Program. Please use program ID # 1253512002 when applying. We hope you choose to join us.

Requirements: The following items are required for consideration of interview. All items must be received through ERAS application portal:

• Personal Statement
• Current CV
• 3 Letters of Recommendation
• USMLE Step 1 CK or COMLEX Level 1 Score
• USMLE Step 2 CS or COMLEX Level 2 PE Score (we understand that due to COVID-19 and USMLE changes some people may not have been able to take CS or PE)
• USMLE Step 2 CK or COMLEX Level 2 CE Score
• USMLE Step 3
• Program Director’s Letter (for new or recent graduates)

Jodi Friedman, MD
Program Director, Geriatric Medicine

Dr. Jodi Friedman has lived in New Paltz, NY with her husband, two daughters, and dog since 2004. She founded the Center for Healthy Aging at Northern Dutchess Hospital in 2010. Originally, she is from the suburbs of Philadelphia, PA. Her undergraduate degree is from Emory University, and she attended medical school at University of Pittsburgh. She completed her Family Medicine Residency Program and Geriatric Fellowship at Thomas Jefferson in Philadelphia, PA (where she was born!). She worked as Geriatric Clerkship director for the Institute for Family Medicine based in Kingston, NY from 2004 to 2010. She has been part of the Nuvance Family Medicine residency program since its inception in 2019 and currently runs the Geriatric clerkship and serves as Core Faculty.