A New Path To Medicine

Hackensack Meridian School of Medicine at Seton Hall University Welcomes First Class

Over the past year, the former headquarters of Hoffmann La Roche, a major pharmaceutical firm located in Clifton and Nutley, New Jersey was redeveloped into a new Inter-professional Health Sciences Campus. The new campus accommodates students from Seton Hall’s College of Nursing, School of Health and Medical Sciences and The Hackensack Meridian School of Medicine. These three schools are housed together on the same campus. This gives a chance for future nurses, doctors, athletic trainers, speech-language pathologists, and many other healthcare specialists to work together as a team, all while learning about 21st-century medicine. The Inter-professional Health Sciences Campus is not just meant to benefit the students going into the three schools, but is also expected to create a notable economic increase in the area where the IHS campus is located.   

Three years ago, both Seton Hall University and Hackensack Meridian Health formally announced their new four-year school of medicine. The medical school is the first private school to open in New Jersey in decades.

A the start of this project, both partners agreed that it would be a lengthy and challenging process, requiring a significant amount of coordination and investment. They worked together until the school opened in the summer of 2018, welcoming the first class in September.  Seton Hall is currently in charge of developing the school's curriculum.

The face of medicine is constantly growing, requiring new physicians who have a different vision and a new skill set. The Hackensack Meridian School of Medicine at Seton Hall University is establishing a forward-thinking medical education program which helps form physicians who are socially competent, humanistic and collaborative members of the health care system where they offer the best quality patient care for everyone.

The medical school will also apply a competency-based curriculum making sure the graduates work efficiently and accurately as interns. The school will also assess the students learning outcomes to make sure they are obtaining scientific knowledge, humanistic attitudes and clinical skills they need. As The Hackensack Meridian School of Medicine at Seton Hall University states on their website, “our unique curriculum utilizes evidence-based teaching methods to promote effective and efficient student learning, always placing medicine and related scientific knowledge in the context of the patient and community.”  

Dr. Bonita Stanton, the Founding Dean at Hackensack Meridian School of Medicine at Seton Hall University, says a career as a physician is, “exciting, rewarding-and, perhaps most importantly- exquisitely humbling.” Dr. Stanton is a physician who also is devoting part of her career to training physicians. She writes in her welcome message, “but as proud as I am of our profession and its training, we must do more. And we must do it differently.” She also mentions the fact that over the last decades the US has had the highest healthcare costs and its poor health outcomes were compared to other industrialized nations. Due to that, there's a unique curriculum that will help change the healthcare system into the better by doing so Dr. Stanton sets a goal for the prospective physicians. “Tomorrow's physicians must learn how to integrate all we have learned in our laboratories and clinical settings and apply it to community life,” writes Dr. Stanton.

The Hackensack Meridian School of Medicine at Seton Hall University is set to create extraordinary physicians that genuinely understand what leads diseases and drives health. Upon graduation, the students should be able to combine technology and systems into their practice and thinking while being able to change health results in all populations.