Lehigh Valley Health Network (LVHN), part of Jefferson Health, is a leading, high-volume healthcare system backed by the extensive research and innovation of Thomas Jefferson University. We are home to a broad cross section of medical specialties and experienced teams that care for more than 100,000 patients each year. Our patient population, clinical settings, and technologies are diverse, giving residents wide-ranging exposure to a variety of advanced surgical procedures and anesthetic techniques.
We excel in the areas of critical care, high-risk obstetrics, interventional pain procedures, and regional anesthesia. We are home to Lehigh Valley Reilly Children's Hospital, which means residents receive world-class pediatric anesthesiology experience during their training. Our health network is also a Level 1 Trauma Center, a Level 2 Pediatric Trauma Center, and maintains MedEvac air and ground transportation for critically ill patients throughout eastern Pennsylvania and southeastern New York.
The clinical knowledge you will gain here is all-encompassing. After completing our four-year anesthesia residency, you will leave a highly capable and skilled anesthesiologist able to work autonomously in any setting.
About our program
We strive to educate resident physicians through exposure to all the subspecialty fields. Our program covers all the necessary medical knowledge, patient care, and technical skills. However, an equally important end-product is the acquisition of judgment skills that come from repetition, exposure to clinical complexity, and dedicated faculty.
In your first year, you’ll train primarily in the 24 main operating rooms at Lehigh Valley Hospital (LVH)–Cedar Crest. While working in the main ORs, you’ll rotate through the subspecialties of general surgery, surgical intensive care, pediatrics, and internal medicine. As your residency progresses, you’ll be exposed to critical care, cardiovascular anesthesiology, thoracic anesthesia, obstetric anesthesiology, pain medicine, acute perioperative pain medicine, and regional anesthesia.
This training will include fulfilment of the six core competencies described by the Accreditation Council for Graduate Medical Education.
Besides high-quality education and practice, our program prioritizes teamwork, curiosity, and inclusivity alongside an experienced faculty and graduate student body. We build intraoperative teaching, simulation workshops, written and oral board reviews, case presentations, and traditional lecture-based dialogues right into our program. Through this structure, we proudly produce exceptional clinicians and leaders in the field of anesthesiology, who are also leaders in perioperative care, basic and clinical research, and quality improvement.
Program highlights
As a resident, you will work in LVHN’s pediatric emergency room and rotate through the pediatric intensive care unit, so you’ll become comfortable caring for the sickest of our pediatric patients.
An expanded emergency department includes 97 adult beds and 27 pediatric beds, a critical care area, several other mixed-acuity areas, and a JeffExpress Urgent Care section.
Non-orthopedic outpatient surgery procedures are performed for a variety of cases including general, colorectal, plastics, OB-GYN, and others. This rotation teaches residents anesthetics with an emphasis on faster postoperative discharges.
During this rotation, you’ll learn to take care of the "sickest of the sick" including trauma patients and transplant patients. The ICU team is a multidisciplinary team made up of both anesthesia and surgical colleagues.
Here, the resident works with common peripheral nerve blocks. You’ll also become familiar with fast-turnover cases, performed under monitored anesthesia care and regional blocks where appropriate, at our freestanding ambulatory surgery centers.
Our program offers dedicated one-on-one time with an attending. As you grow in your role as a physician, you’ll gain increased responsibility teaching junior residents and medical students and will receive on-shift feedback as well as written feedback.
Research is a top priority, as is evidence-based medicine and the most current medical care. All residents are required to perform an activity that may include clinical research, systematic literature reviews, surveys, qualitative research, and autoethnography.
We offer scholarships for persons of color, LGBTQI+ identified or gender-nonconforming individuals, individuals from disadvantaged backgrounds, and those living with disabilities. Learn more.