Robert Wood Johnson University Hospital and University Medical Center at Princeton have state of the art critical care units with dedicated housestaff teams. Residents are assigned critical care rotations in one-month blocks, spending approximately 5 months in critical care rotations during their entire residency. During this time, residents develop proficiency in many areas of critical care medicine including exposure to a wide array of procedures: central venous catheterization, arterial cannulation, and mechanical ventilation.

Robert Wood Johnson University Hospital has the larger unit with a total of 30 combined MICU and CCU beds. In the CCU, residents typically manage care for patients in cardiogenic shock, heart failure, patients awaiting cardiac transplant, survivors of cardiac arrests, and patients with acute myocardial infarctions post-intervention. In the MICU, residents manage a wide spectrum of critically ill patients from bone marrow transplants to high-risk or complicated obstetrics to patients with respiratory failure and shock. Dedicated critical care and cardiology faculty deliver the critical care curriculum through lectures and daily bedside teaching. Board-certified critical care subspecialists are physically present in the MICU overnight every day of the week. Their knowledge and skill allow for supervision of procedures, assistance in difficult situations, and increased opportunity for teaching, greatly enhancing the ICU experience.

The ICU at the University Medical Center at Princeton is a 15 bed closed unit. Our four critical care attendings in Princeton share primary responsibility for all patients in the ICU. Being present in the ICU every day of the week, they conduct a critical care lecture series, daily bedside teaching rounds, procedural supervision, and extensive supplemental bedside teaching. Additionally, there are two critical care journal clubs led by residents on their Princeton ICU rotation each month.