If you do a residency yourself, you can get your own J1. There was a thread a while back where I explained what the plusses and minusses of getting your own J1 vs doing the residency with an employment authorization on J2 are.
If you want to change to H1b status, it depends on whether your hubbys J1 has a home residency requirement or not. If not, you can switch to H1b (if you find a hospital willing to sponsor you).