Graduate medical education

Internal Medicine Residency

An ACGME-accredited program of 125 residents in the South Bronx, with a long tradition of training outstanding internists for primary care, hospital medicine, and fellowship.

How to apply Why Lincoln

125

Residents, 100 categorical

Four-week blocks a year

12h

Longest shift at any level — no 24-hour call

100%

Most recent first-time ABIM pass rate

The Internal Medicine Residency Program at Lincoln Medical Center is fully accredited by the ACGME — with no citations — and provides comprehensive post-graduate training across the full breadth of internal medicine, with emphasis on the skills needed for primary care practice and hospital medicine. We are a family of 125 residents. Our goal is to maintain the highest academic standards and to lay the foundations for lifelong, self-directed learning, an essential requirement of today’s internist.

Lincoln Medical Center is a designated Level 1 trauma center, regional stroke center, and cancer center, located in the South Bronx — an area experiencing remarkable development and reinvigoration — with a long tradition of caring for the poor and disadvantaged of New York City. Residents see a vast range of pathology that prepares them for whatever path they choose.

Clinical training

Training provides a wealth of clinical experience in inpatient and outpatient settings. Lincoln was one of the first hospitals to adopt hospitalists to manage its diverse inpatient population, and the hospitalist program has matured into the backbone of our inpatient training. Our floors include a 40-bed telemetry unit that functions as an ICU step-down — unusually, with ventilated patients cared for outside the ICU — and a 22-bed medical ICU praised for its acute stroke management.

Outpatient training includes a weekly longitudinal continuity clinic beginning in the intern year, ambulatory block rotations, and rich experience in emergency medicine. During ambulatory blocks residents rotate through gynecology, ENT, ophthalmology, women’s health, adolescent medicine, and the allergy clinic, and additional training comes through the subspecialty clinics, including geriatrics.

Education

Conferences, seminars, and novel didactic models complement direct patient care: daily morning report, noon conference, weekly grand rounds, and morbidity and mortality presentations, alongside doctor–patient communication modules, medical informatics, a comprehensive primary care curriculum, community medicine and managed care, end-of-life care, palliative care and pain management, and a debate series. A newly renovated Simulation Center provides training in airway management, central line placement, and emergency codes, and a dedicated point-of-care ultrasound curriculum makes residents proficient in bedside ultrasound.

Life at Lincoln

Residency at Lincoln is not all work. We are a large and diverse group, and a closely bonded one. The program organizes game nights, picnics, sporting events, breakfast after every Grand Rounds, and an end-of-rotation lunch; outside the hospital there is an annual residency picnic in Central Park, a holiday party in December, and a graduation gala in June. See the Gallery for a taste.

Program leadership

Nehad Shabarek, MD, FACP

Program Director

Dr. Shabarek graduated from Aleppo University Medical School in Syria in 1989 and completed a combined Internal Medicine/Pediatrics residency at Lincoln Medical Center in 1995, followed by a year as administrative Chief Medical Resident. He joined the Department of Medicine in 1996 as one of the first hospitalists in New York City and has worked in the adult and pediatric emergency departments ever since.

He became Associate Program Director in 2007 and Program Director in 2016. He completed fellowship training in Simulation Medicine at the Health + Hospitals / IMSAL Center in 2018 and directs the Lincoln Simulation Center. Dr. Shabarek chairs the CPR / Rapid Response Team committee and serves on the Credentialing, Patient and Staff Safety, Stroke, and Sepsis committees. He is board certified in Internal Medicine, Pediatrics, and Hospital Medicine.

Areas of interest: patient and staff safety; resident and student education; simulation in medicine; integrating physician and nursing education as a team.

Ma. Carla Angela Hernaez-Evangelista, MD

Associate Program Director; Chair, Clinical Competency Committee

Dr. Evangelista graduated from the University of the City of Manila College of Medicine in the Philippines in 2006 and completed her Internal Medicine residency at Lincoln in 2014. She was an attending physician in Ambulatory Care from 2014 to 2020 and joined the hospitalist division in August 2020. She has served as Associate Program Director since 2017 and chairs the Clinical Competency Committee.

Areas of interest: resident and medical student education; simulation lab and ventilator training; the Peer-Based Learning rotation; the point-of-care ultrasound curriculum.

Vidya Menon, MD, FACP

Associate Program Director; Department Research Director

Dr. Menon graduated from Seth G.S. Medical College and King Edward Memorial Hospital in Bombay, India, in 1988 and completed her Internal Medicine residency at Lincoln Medical Center in 2000. She is board certified by the ABIM with Focused Practice in Hospital Medicine (2013). She rejoined Lincoln in 2018 and was appointed the department’s Research Director a year later, leading several research projects and clinical drug trials during the COVID-19 pandemic. She was appointed Associate Program Director in February 2022.

Carmen Oviedo Hilario, MD

Associate Program Director; Chief of Ambulatory Care Medicine

Vanessa Japa

Residency Program Coordinator

Cynthia Santiago

Residency Program Coordinator

Explore

Inside the program

Rotations and scheduleWards, nights, MICU, MAR, electives, ambulatory blocks, POCUS, ventilator management, research. Our residentsMeet the PGY-1, PGY-2, and PGY-3 classes — physicians from medical schools around the world. Fellowship matchesWhere our graduates have gone, year by year, from cardiology to palliative care. Salary and benefitsCIR contract salaries, meal allowance, education funds, health coverage, and more. WellnessConfidential burnout screening, a wellness room, and a year-round calendar of events. TestimonialsWhat alumni and current residents say about training at Lincoln.