This year, Montefiore Medical Center is celebrating 50 years of its postgraduate Physician Assistant (PA) surgical residency program, the oldest such program in the country. Established in 1971, Montefiore officials say the program has proudly trained over 450 PAs and is steeped in great history and tradition. 

According to the American Academy of Physician Associates (AAPA), PAs are medical professionals who diagnose illness, develop and manage treatment plans, prescribe medications, and often serve as a patient’s principal healthcare provider. With thousands of hours of medical training, PAs practice in every medical setting and specialty.

As part of the program, residents at Montefiore Medical Center, located at 111 East 210th Street in Norwood, rotate in specialties such as surgical intensive care unit (SICU), trauma surgery, general surgery, vascular surgery, CT surgery, minimally invasive surgery, ambulatory surgery, transplant surgery and elective rotations in areas such as plastic surgery, intervention radiology, ENT, orthopedics, and urology, to name a few.

According to vascular.org, vascular surgeons are specialists who are highly trained to treat diseases of the vascular or circulatory system, made up of blood vessels. Arteries carrying oxygen-rich blood and veins carrying blood back to the heart, are the roadways of the circulatory system.

Cardiothoracic surgery, according to ctsurgerypatients.org, relates to surgical procedures of the heart, lungs, esophagus, and other organs in the chest. Meanwhile, interventional radiology is a medical specialization that involves performing a range of imaging procedures to obtain images of the inside of the body, according to insideradiology.com.au.

An ENT is a medical specialist who is concerned with the diagnosis and treatment of disorders of the head and neck, including, in particular, the ears, nose, and throat, according to https://www.medicinenet.com. Meanwhile, healthline.com defines urology as the field of medicine that focuses on diseases of the urinary tract and the male reproductive tract.

In the context of the program’s 50th anniversary, chief PA and postgraduate PA surgical residency program director, Ben Philip, said, “As we embark on 50 years of our residency, we have graduated 465 ‘Montefiore residency trained’ surgical PAs that practice across the country.” He added, “With about 80 postgraduate PA residencies now in the nation, everyone in the industry knows that Montefiore set the standard in 1971, and we continue with a reputation of excellence, and being the best in training qualified, competent and reliable surgical PAs.”

Today, there are 85 such surgical residency programs across the nation.

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Welcome to the Norwood News, a bi-weekly community newspaper that primarily serves the northwest Bronx communities of Norwood, Bedford Park, Fordham and University Heights. Through our Breaking Bronx blog, we focus on news and information for those neighborhoods, but aim to cover as much Bronx-related news as possible. Founded in 1988 by Mosholu Preservation Corporation, a not-for-profit affiliate of Montefiore Medical Center, the Norwood News began as a monthly and grew to a bi-weekly in 1994. In September 2003 the paper expanded to cover University Heights and now covers all the neighborhoods of Community District 7. The Norwood News exists to foster communication among citizens and organizations and to be a tool for neighborhood development efforts. The Norwood News runs the Bronx Youth Journalism Heard, a journalism training program for Bronx high school students. As you navigate this website, please let us know if you discover any glitches or if you have any suggestions. We’d love to hear from you. You can send e-mails to norwoodnews@norwoodnews.org or call us anytime (718) 324-4998.