Internal Medicine Residency Program

A Message from Program Director

Under the leadership of Drs. Leanne Forman and Neil Schluger, the Internal Medicine Residency Program of Westchester Medical Center/New York Medical College is committed to providing outstanding training in Internal Medicine. Dr. Forman was appointed program director in 2017 after serving in leadership positions in the residency as the Section Chief and Director of Outpatient Medicine for more than ten years. Dr. Forman has more than 25 years of experience in graduate and undergraduate medical education at several distinguished institutions. She has consistently been recognized for excellence in teaching and contributions to the program. The program continuously strives to anticipate the needs of the physicians of today and tomorrow. The educational process focuses on the acquisition of medical knowledge, utilization of evidence, and development of clinical skills, as well as emerging practice patterns.

We motivate each house officer to embrace a critical and probing scientific attitude, along with a commitment to reducing health disparities. As a tertiary referral center, Westchester Medical Center is among the highest case mix index in the region. The Cardiology, Transplant, and Critical Care services care for patients from throughout the Hudson Valley. Our diverse patient population provides a robust clinical and educational experience for training physicians. House staff interacts with full-time faculty members from all divisions regularly for mentorship, didactics and clinical supervision. All mandatory training, including resident continuity clinic, is provided on site.

The university hospital shares a large picturesque campus with New York Medical College, including the schools of medicine, dentistry, graduate school of basic medical sciences, and school of health sciences. This close proximity provides integration of medical student education as well as numerous teaching and precepting opportunities for the house staff. The medical school has a new translational research center that provides the infrastructure to conduct high quality research by utilizing the resources offered by New York Medical College and clinical investigators at Westchester Medical Center.

Recent enhancements to the program include the creation of a Director of Research for the Division of Internal Medicine. The position is held by Dr. Christopher Nabors, who has received national recognition for his quality and safety projects, which have led to many scholarly projects for the department. New educational venues include telemedicine, a formal point-of-care ultrasound training program, and increased use of the simulation center. Hospital-wide initiatives to advance safety and quality improvement include the expansion of a telehealth unit and increased collaboration with the quality improvement department.

Fellowships are available in all approved areas of subspecialty training at the Medical Center, and WMC house staff are highly successful at obtaining fellowships of their choice at the medical center and throughout the country. Please be sure to take a look at the fellowship placement of our program graduates on the "Graduate Fellowship Placement" tab.

Program Leadership

Leanne Forman, MD Program Director	Jason Goutis, MD Associate Program Director	Christopher Nabors, MD, PhD Associate Program Director Research Director		Merita Shehu, MD Associate Program Director

Educational Program Liaisons

Neurology

Ronald Cho, MD

Dr. Ronald Cho is an Assistant Professor of Medicine at New York Medical College and serves as the Neurology Educational Liaison. He graduated from Cornell University, attended Texas Tech Medical School and completed his internal medicine residency at UTHSC at San Antonio. He has practiced medicine in a variety of settings for the past 19 years, primarily as a hospitalist.

Dr. Cho has won numerous teaching awards and was inducted into AOA as a faculty member. He is passionate about teaching house staff how to become better physicians by honing their clinical skills and supporting them during their educational experience. He serves as mentor to numerous medicine residents in addition to the Neurology categorical base interns.

Anesthesiology

Neal Shah, MD

Dr. Shah is an Assistant Professor of Internal Medicine, part of the teaching faculty here at Westchester. He completed his residency at Drexel University followed by serving as faculty at Temple University. Dr. Shah also serves as the Internal Medicine liaison for the categorical anesthesia residents.

Program Overview and Curriculum

Program Structure

	2020-2021	2021-2022	2022-2023	2023-2024
PGY-1 Categorical	18*	20*	20*	20*
PGY-1 Preliminary	8**	1**	0	0
Anesthesiology Categorical Base Year	5	10	10	10
Neurology Categorical Base Year	3	3	3	3
PGY-2	18	18	20	20
PGY-3	18	18	18	20
Chief Residents	3	3	3	3

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Net gain of three residents by AY 2023-2024
*1 Categorical Shabbos position available each year
**1 Preliminary Shabbos position available through 2021-2022

Our program follows a 6 + 2 schedule (6 weeks inpatient; 2 weeks ambulatory).

Currently all ambulatory rotations are on-site.

PGY-I (Categorical) Yearly Schedule:

• Eight to ten weeks Medicine
• Four to six weeks Specialty floors    
• Six to eight weeks Intensive Care Unit
• Eight to ten weeks Elective
• Eight weeks Night Medicine
• 13 weeks Ambulatory Clinic and QI/Telemedicine
• Four weeks of Vacation
• Two weeks ER

PGY-I (Preliminary)

• 18-24 weeks Medicine/Specialty floors
• Eight weeks Intensive Care Unit/CCU
• 12-14 weeks Elective
• Six to eight weeks Night Medicine
• Four weeks of Vacation
• Preliminary program tailored to meet advanced program requirements.

PGY II

• 10-12 weeks general floors/specialty floors
• Eight to ten weeks Elective
• Two to four weeks ICU
• Four to six weeks Night Float
• 12-14 weeks Ambulatory Clinic and QI/Telemedicine
• Two to four weeks Medicine Consults
• Four weeks of Vacation

PGY III

• Eight to ten weeks Electives
• 10-11 weeks Ambulatory Clinic
• Six to eight weeks ICU / Consults
• Six to eight weeks ICU Night Float
• Six to eight weeks Medicine Admitting Resident
• Four weeks of Vacation
• Six to eight weeks General Floors

A Typical Day on the Floors
  7:00 a.m.    Morning Sign-in
  7:15 a.m.    Morning Report (on Thursday)
  8:00 a.m.    Hospitalist Team Bedside Rounds
12:30 p.m.    Noon Conference
  1:30 p.m.    Patient Care
  5:00 p.m.    Sign-out

Floors
Weekends, Call and Night Float

Floor Call
On weekdays every 4th night from 5:00 – 9:00 p.m.

Floor Night Float
Six nights/week from 9:00 p.m. – 7:00 a.m. (Mon. – Sun.)

Ancillary Services

• 24/7 phlebotomy shifts
• IVs & PICC/midlines by trained nurses
• EKG technicians 24/7
• Patient transport support

Conference & Didactics
12:30 – 1:30 p.m. dedicated to resident lectures every day. Primary focus of the curriculum is to prepare residents for ABIM boards and to equip them to be mature and confident clinicians. Didactics comprises four-week blocks of each subject throughout the academic year, covering all core subjects for board preparation. This also includes weekly board review sessions run by the Chief Resident.

Residents have protected didactic experiences one half-day per week during each ambulatory rotation.

Subscription to NEJM 360 Knowledge+ provided by institution for PGY2 and PGY3 residents.

Grand rounds (Wednesdays)
On Wednesdays, we have departmental grand rounds from 12:00 – 1:00 p.m. for all PGY levels where distinguished guests present topics of interest and engage with the house staff and faculty in scholastic discussions.

Critical care rounds (Fridays)
Weekly critical care rounds take place from 12:30 – 1:30 p.m. where ICU residents from the CCU or Medical ICU present interesting cases, moderated by critical care attendings.

Chair Rounds (Fridays)
Weekly chairperson rounds take place in the main hospital from 12:30 – 1:30 p.m. where an on-call intern presents an interesting case from the floors, moderated by Dr. Schluger and faculty.

Know About Kidneys (Fridays)
Monthly kidney rounds with Nephrology Program Director, Dr. Savneek Chugh take place on the last Friday of every month from 12:30 – 1:30 p.m. The resident on call on the Medicine floor presents an interesting renal case and Dr. Chugh goes over systemic approach towards the case.

M&M (Fridays)
Monthly rounds with program leadership to discuss cases identified by chief residents.

Clinical Skills Education
Our educational simulation experiences include utilization of the state of the art New York Medical College Simulation Center and the Westchester Medical Center Surgical Skills Lab.

Our Residents

Department of Medicine Residency Program: Chief Residents

2020-2021 Chief Residents

Firas Jafri, MBBS

Firas is from Karachi, Pakistan. He spent his childhood in Saudia Arabia and later moved to Pakistan to complete his medical education at Jinnah Medical and Dental college. His desire to pursue a career in the United States lured him into research from early in his career. After graduation he came to Westchester Medical Center as a research coordinator in the department of Hematology and Oncology. He then decided to pursue his medicine residency here with us, and now he is one of our Chief Medical Residents.

Firas is interested in benign and malignant hematology and anticoagulation. He is well published with manuscripts in high impact journals. During the course of his residency he has published manuscripts, abstract, case reports, review articles and book chapters, and is now actively involved in mentoring the junior residents. Firas wants to see himself as a heme oncologist in an academic setting.

He lives with his lovely wife and a daughter in Valhalla. Inspired by his father, he enjoys reading about history, mainly of the subcontinent region. He is fond of traveling and automobiles. Firas utilized his time during residency to travel and explore 12 different national parks in the United States.

Jagjit Khosla, MBBS

Dr. Jagjit Khosla was born and raised in the historic city of New Delhi, the capital of India. During the final year of medical school, he was selected for electives at Massachusetts General Hospital, which inspired him towards the American healthcare system. After completing medical school at the prestigious University College of Medical Sciences in Delhi, Dr. Khosla worked as a junior resident doctor and then moved to the United States. He was moved by the beauty of the heavenly Hudson River Valley and chose to stay at Westchester Medical Center for residency in medicine. During residency, he was known for his hard work, professionalism and trustworthiness, and was rightfully awarded the “Clinical Excellence Award” for providing exceptional patient care. Patients loved his calm disposition at work, and fondly called him “Dr. Jags.” He was especially engaged in the teaching activities as NYMC preceptor, doing didactic sessions, QI projects, and has been known for excellent PowerPoint skills.

Dr. Khosla was elected to be a chief medical resident for his inherent leadership qualities. He enjoys academic writing and has worked on writing a book chapter, literature reviews, abstracts, and posters. As chief resident, he is spearheading the reforms in didactic education of the residents and working closely with NYMC to enhance medical student education. He is also an active member of numerous hospital committees, including Code and Resuscitation Committee, Peer Review Committee, and Clinical Competency Committee.

During his spare time, he loves to explore new places with his beautiful wife and enjoys reading motivational/self-development books. Being tech-savvy, you may find him troubleshooting someone’s PC or Android phone during his free time. His future goal is to be a heart failure specialist, and we wish him all the very best for his future endeavours.

Anila Kumar, DO

Dr. Kumar was born and raised in New Jersey, where she enjoyed summers on the shore. She also lived in Jakarta, Indonesia, for a few years, which sparked her lifelong interest in traveling and exploring. She completed undergrad at the University of Michigan (Go Blue!) where she found medicine as the way to combine her natural curiosity about science and her deep sense of compassion, leading her back to her home state for medical school. She attended Rowan University School of Osteopathic Medicine and went on to finish internal medicine training at Westchester Medical Center. Here, she was recognized for her hard-work, leadership, and research accolades by being honored with the “Best Research Project Poster Presentation Award on ‘Determinants of Primary healthcare utilization among LGBT individuals in Westchester County,’” as well as the “Best Clinic PGY-III” award. She was also selected to be a preceptor for MS1 and MS2 New York Medical College students under the Doctors Across New York (DANY) grant. Additionally, she presented several posters at national conferences such as the American College of Gastroenterology and American College of Physicians.

She was appointed as Chief Medical Resident where she organizes Grand Rounds, mentors residents and medical students, precepts at clinic and works to promote the social well being of the program. She hopes to continue this trend through a career in gastroenterology and hepatology. When Anila is not at the hospital, she can either be found reading by the Hudson, hiking a new mountain, traveling or spending time with her family and friends.

PL1 Categorical Residents

Basha Behrman, MD New York Medical College	Rebekah Cesar, MD State University of New York Downstate Medical Center College of Medicine	Lillian Chang, MD University of Vermont College of Medicine	Makeda Dawkins, MD State University of New York Downstate Medical Center College of Medicine	Kelly DeToy, MD Stony Brook University School of Medicine
Jared Feldman, DO New York Institute of Technology College of Osteopathic Medicine	Michelle Kantarovich, MD Sidney Kimmel Medical College at Thomas Jefferson University	David Kastrinsky, MD Zucker School of Medicine at Hofstra/Northwell	Natanel Khaitov, MD Technion Israel Institute of Technology	Sungsoo Kim, MD State University of New York Downstate Medical Center College of Medicine
Kelsey McManus, MB BCh BAO Royal College of Surgeons in Ireland	Juliet Meir, MD Charles E Schmidt College of Medicine at Florida Atlantic University	Robin Ochei, MD State University of New York Downstate Medical Center College of Medicine	Alexander Ogilvy, MD New York Medical College	Jay Patel, DO Michigan State University College of Osteopathic Medicine
Areen Pitaktong, MD Texas A&M Health Science Center College of Medicine	Joseph Quintas, MD State University of New York Downstate Medical Center College of Medicine	Avisha Shah, MD Geisinger Commonwealth School of Medicine

PL1 Preliminary Residents

Khaled Aziz, MD PhD Mayo Clinic School of Medicine	Danielle Emmet, DO Touro University College of Osteopathic Medicine-California	Christopher Ibabao, MD State University of New York Upstate Medical University	Hwajin Lee, MD Wake Forest University School of Medicine	Elana Pauls, MD New York Medical College
Tania Schiff, MD New York Medical College

PL2 Categorical Residents

William Assante, MD New York Medical College	Glory Atuh, MD New York Medical College	Daniel Greenberg, DO University of New England College of Osteopathic Medicine	Urvashi Hooda, MBBS All-India Institute of Medical Sciences	Chengyue Jin, MD Peking University Health Science Center
Justin Konig, MD Stony Brook University Health Sciences Center School of Medicine	Bo Li, MD University of Toledo College of Medicine	Michael Lichtbroun, MD Sackler School of Medicine	Zilan Lin, MD Medical University of South Carolina	Liana Michaud, DO Touro College of Osteopathic Medicine
Gaspar Miranda, MD Escuela Autónoma de Ciencias Médicas de Centro América	Fareena Nawaz, MD University at Buffalo School of Medicine and Biomedical Sciences	Victor Paulose, MD SUNY Downstate Medical Center College of Medicine	Daniel Peneyra, MD SUNY Upstate Medical University College of Medicine	Robert Pollock, MD Sidney Kimmel Medical College at Thomas Jefferson University
Russell Rozario, MD Lewis Katz School of Medicine at Temple University	Aaron Schluger, MD Columbia University College of Physicians and Surgeons	Matthew Seplowe, DO Touro College of Osteopathic Medicine	Abhinaya Sridhar, MBBS Kasturba Medical College Mangalore	Rathnamitreyee Vegunta, MD Katuri Medical College, Guntur

PL3 Categorical Residents

Sara Akbar, MBBS Aga Khan University Medical College	Michael Broker, MD Albert Einstein College of Medicine of Yeshiva University	Michael Chen, MD Penn State University College of Medicine	Neha Deval, MBBS Gandhi Medical College, Secunderabad	Nikhil Govil, DO Chicago College of Osteopathic Medicine
Lawrence Huang, DO Touro College of Osteopathic Medicine	Anant Jain, MBBS Government Medical College Amritsar	Dennis John, MD New York Medical College	Woo Young Kim, MD Korea University College of Medicine
Levy Jo Manuntag, MD University of Santo Tomas Faculty of Medicine and Surgery	Berhanemeskel Nesketa, MD Jimma University College of Public Health and Medical Sciences	Monica Fabiola Nogueira Cordeiro, MD Universidade Federal do Rio de Janeiro (UFRJ) Faculdade de Medicina	Leonardo Zelaya Castillo, MD Universidad Católica de Honduras Nuestra Señora Reina de la Paz Facultad en Ciencias de la Salud
Aditi Sen, MBBS Rajarshi Chhatrapati Shahu Maharaj Government Medical College	Kowshik Sen, DO Touro College of Osteopathic Medicine	Zhong Zheng, MD University of New Mexico School of Medicine	Yangsheng Zhou, DO New York Institute of Technology College of Osteopathic Medicine

Graduate Fellowship Placement

Congratulations to our class of 2021! The following positions were secured in this year’s match by our 3^rd year and chief residents:

Cardiology	University of Oklahoma
Endocrinology, Diabetes and Metabolism	Albert Einstein College of Medicine / Montefiore Medical Center
Gastroenterology	Westchester Medical Center
Hematology and Medical Oncology	North Shore University / Long Island Jewish Medical Center
	SUNY Downstate Medical Center
Nephrology	Baylor College of Medicine
	New York University
	University of Washington-Seattle
Pulmonary / Critical Care Medicine	Westchester Medical Center
Rheumatology	Loma Linda University

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Fellowship Matches 2016 - 2020

 

Chief Resident Placement

2015	Prakash Harikrishnan Westchester Medical Center | Cardiology Dhaval Kolte Brown University | Cardiology Massachusetts General Hospital | Interventional & Structural Cardiology Abdallah Sanaani Westchester Medical Center | Cardiology
2016	Tanush Gupta Montefiore/Albert Einstein Hospital | Cardiology Columbia University Interventional | Cardiology Houston Methodist Hospital | Structural Interventions Marjan Mujib Brown University | Cardiology Neha Maria Paul University of Texas at Houston | Cardiology
2017	Dennis Roarke Northshore LIJ Health System | Faculty Rahul Sao University of Connecticut | Gastroenterology John Savooji Westchester Medical Center | Hematology and Medical Oncology
2018	Khwaja Haq             Henry Ford Health System | Gastroenterology Stony Brook University Hospital | Advanced Endoscopy Katherine Linder Baylor University | Hematology and Medical Oncology Srikanth Yandrapalli Massachusetts General Hospital | Interventional Cardiology
2019	Gabriela Andries Newark Beth Israel Hospital | Cardiology Zahava Farkas             Westchester Medical Center | Gastroenterology Michael Karass             NY Presbyterian-Queens Hospital | Pulmonary/Critical Care
2020	Joanna Blanco Englewood Hospital & Medical Center | Primary Care Shikha Broker Atlantic Air Regional Hospital | Primary Care Alina Kifayat Westchester Medical Center | Rheumatology

Faculty

Neil W. Schluger, MD | Director, Department of Medicine

Neil W. Schluger is the Barbara and William Rosenthal Professor and Chairman of the Department of Medicine at New York Medical College and Director of the Department of Medicine at Westchester Medical Center.

Throughout his academic career, Dr. Schluger has focused on tuberculosis and global aspects of lung health, with a strong public health orientation. His work in TB has centered on epidemiology, novel diagnostics and new treatments for latent and active tuberculosis. His work on global lung health centers on the effect of air quality on health, the need to build a physician workforce in low and middle-income countries, and raising awareness of the global drivers of lung disease including tobacco and air pollution. He has been a principal investigator in the Tuberculosis Trials Consortium, an international collaboration sponsored by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) for 25 years and was the Chairman of the consortium from 2000-2016. He is also co-editor and a co-author of The Tobacco Atlas, the definitive work describing the extent and consequences of the global epidemic of tobacco use, published by Vital Strategies and the American Cancer Society. Dr. Schluger is a founder and director of the East Africa Training Initiative in Pulmonary Medicine. Through this program, based at Tikur Anbessa (Black Lion) Specialized Hospital in Addis Ababa and the Addis Ababa University School of Medicine, the first generation of pulmonary physicians in Ethiopia has been trained and an academically oriented pulmonary division has been established at Ethiopia’s leading public hospital. He also serves as Senior Advisor for Science at Vital Strat