Residency Program

The Internal Medicine Residency Program is committed to providing comprehensive post-graduate training in Internal medicine, maintain the highest academic standards, and establish the foundations for lifelong self-directed learning, an essential requirement of today’s internist.

The Internal Medicine Residency Program at Lincoln Medical Center is fully accredited by the American Council of Graduate Medical Education -ACGME and provides comprehensive post-graduate training in all areas of the vast field of Internal Medicine with an emphasis on the skills required for Primary Care Practice and Hospitalist Medicine. Lincoln Medical Center is located in the South Bronx (an area experiencing remarkable development and reinvigoration) and has a long tradition of providing care to the poor and the disadvantaged in the City of New York.

The Internal Medicine Residency Training provides a wealth of clinical experience in the inpatient and outpatient settings which is accompanied by diverse conferences, grand rounds and seminar series that together provide solid foundations for achieving excellence in providing primary care services.

The outpatient training includes longitudinal continuity clinics, ambulatory block rotations and rich experience in emergency medicine. During the ambulatory block rotation. Residents have the opportunity to rotate through gynecology, ENT and adolescent medicine. Beginning in the internship, all residents follow their own patients in a weekly continuity clinic.

Additional ambulatory training is provided by the outpatient clinics of the different medical subspecialties. These include geriatrics and gynecology.  Lincoln Medical Center is one of the first hospitals to implement hospitalists to manage the diverse inpatient population. Over the years, the hospitalist program has grown and matured, forming the backbone of the comprehensive and extensive training in inpatient medicine.

Lincoln Medical Center is a designated level one trauma center, regional stroke center and cancer center. Conferences, seminars and novel didactic models complement the direct patient care experience. These include doctor-patient communication modules, medical informatics, comprehensive primary care curriculum, and community medicine and managed care, end of life, palliative care and pain management, debate series.

Residency Program Leadership

Program Director: Nehad Shabarek, MD, FACP

Dr. Shabarek graduated from Aleppo University Medical School in Syria in 1989. He completed his residency in combined Internal Medicine/Pediatrics at Lincoln Medical Center in 1995 and later worked as an administrative Chief Medical Resident for one year. He joined the medicine department at Lincoln in 1996 as one of the first hospitalists in NYC and started to work in the Adult and Pediatric Emergency department until the present.

He became an Associate Program Director in 2007 and Program Director of Medicine Residency Program in 2016. He completed a fellowship training in Simulation Medicine at Health and Hospitals/IMSAL Center in 2018 and he is the Director of Lincoln Simulation Center. Dr. Shabarek is the Chair of CPR/Rapid Response Team committee and a member of Credentialing, patient and staff safety, Stroke, and Sepsis committees.

Dr. Shabarek is board certified in Internal Medicine, Pediatrics and Hospital Medicine.

Area of interests: Patients and staff safety; Residents and students education; Simulation in Medicine; Integrating doctors and nurses education as a team.​

Associate Program Director: Ma. Carla Angela Hernaez-Evangelista, MD

Dr. Evangelista graduated from the University of the City of Manila, College of Medicine, in Philippines in 2006. She completed her Internal Medicine Residency at Lincoln Hospital in 2014. She started working as an Attending Physician at Lincoln Hospital-Ambulatory Care in 2014 to 2020. She recently joined the Hospitalist Department last August 2020. She started as the Associate Program Director of the Internal Medicine Residency Program since 2017. 

Dr. Evangelista is the current Chair of the Clinical Competency Committee. 

Areas of Interests: Residents and Medical Students Education and Training; Simulation lab/ Ventilator training; Peer Based Learning Rotation.

Associate Program Director: Carmen Arlene Oviedo, MD

Dr. Oviedo graduated from Universidad Iberoamericana in the Dominican Republic in 2005. She then completed her residency in Internal Medicine Residency at Lincoln Hospital in 2017 and later on joined the Ambulatory Care Department-Medicine in the same year. She was appointed as Associated Program Director last December 2020. 

Dr. Oviedo is in-charge of resident Wellness and Ambulatory Care Concerns/Curriculum. 

Associate Program Director: Alexander LaFortune, MD

Dr. LaFortune graduated from St. George University, Grenada, West Indies in 2013. He completed his Internal Medicine Residency at Elmhurst Hospital, NY in 2016 and pursued Infectious Disease Fellowship at Mount Sinai West/St. Luke’s, NY in 2018. He then joined Lincoln Hospital/ID in 2018. He was then appointed as Associate Program Director last December 2020. 

Dr. LaFortune is in charged of Faculty Development and ABIM Board reviews. 

Associate Program Director: Vidya Menon, M.D. FACP

Dr. Menon graduated from Seth G.S. Medical College and King Edward Memorial Hospital in Bombay, India in 1988.  She completed her Internal Medicine Residency training at Lincoln Medical Center in 2000. She is board certified  by ABIM – Focused Practice in Hospital Medicine in 2013. She joined Lincoln Medical Center in 2018 and has been appointed as the Department’s Research Director after a year. She spearheaded several research projects during the Covid-19 Pandemic and has been greatly involved with clinical drug trials against the virus at that time. She was appointed as Associate Program Director last February 2022. 


Dr. Menon is in charged of Research/Scholarly  aspect of the Residency program.

Program Coordinators

Ms. Rosario Hooker
Residency Program Coordinator
Gisele Cordero
Residency Program Coordinator