First year residents each spend six weeks on the Obstetrical Service at Bellevue Hospital. On this service, junior residents have the opportunity to manage the labor floor under the direction of the senior and chief residents and an attending physician who is always in-house. Teaching rounds are held daily at Bellevue, and are attended by medical students, housestaff and members of the faculty, including the Division of Maternal-Fetal Medicine. The first year residents also do a one-month rotation in Obstetrics at Elmhurst Hospital in Queens, which arose, in part as a result of the merger of the NYU and Mt. Sinai Medical Centers. Elmhurst fills a role in Queens similar to Bellevue's role in Manhattan as a large municipal hospital, servicing an inner-city population.
Obstetrical volume is considerable and provides additional labor and delivery experience.
Interns rotate for one-month on the Bellevue gynecology service and also do two months of night float at Bellevue, which consists of both obstetrics and gynecology. The intent of the first year schedule is to provide an introduction to general medicine and gynecology and an extensive experience in obstetrics. This achieved, the resident will emerge from the first year with a foundation for continued primary care education, well-established delivery room skills, beginning surgical skills and knowledge, and an understanding of gynecology and female anatomy sufficient to begin honing the art of gynecological surgery. Thus, during the second year of residency, four months are spent on the surgical services at Bellevue and Tisch Hospitals. During two of these months, the PGY-2 rotates through Oncology, participating in oncology cases at both Tisch and Bellevue Hospitals.