Residents in the Internal Medicine Residency program in NYU Langone’s Department of Medicine are highly productive researchers with many published papers, book chapters, and abstracts and conference presentations every year. Residents are encouraged to collaborate with faculty members to participate in scholarly research endeavors during the course of their residency. We offer flexible options for pursuing quality improvement and patient safety (QIPS), basic science, translational, and clinical research.

Our residents have multiple opportunities to present their research. These include submitting work to NYU Langone’s online journal of medicine Clinical Correlations and presenting at NYU Langone’s Quality and Safety Day and Research Day, in addition to national conferences. We offer a stipend to residents for conference presentations.

Postgraduate Year 1

Within the first six weeks of postgraduate year one, or PGY-1, the residency research director, Peter S. Liang, MD, MPH, meets with interns in small groups to introduce the opportunities for resident research.

Throughout the year, interns participate in professional career development counseling that includes specialty-specific advising and scholarly research mentoring, to help identify scholarly interests and connect with mentors and principal investigators.

Postgraduate Years 2 and 3

During postgraduate year two, or PGY-2, residents participates in a two-week focused block to learn the basics of research methodology and develop the skills necessary to complete a research project within the time constraints of a resident’s schedule. Residents work in small teams to create a research protocol with guidance from a faculty mentor and review topics such as research design, subjects and sampling, hypothesis testing, and data presentation. The experience culminates in the presentation of your research protocol to peers and faculty. Many of these projects have been presented as abstracts at national scientific conferences and can be credited with starting collaborative scholarly relationships among peers and faculty.

Residents continue to pursue additional avenues for scholarly work during their PGY-2 year, including specialty-specific advising and a two-week Quality Improvement and Patient Safety (QIPS) block, which includes the opportunity to work on a longitudinal QIPS project of their choosing and present a hospital mortality to the Occurrence Review Committee. The capstone project for this block is a root cause analysis (RCA). Using a recent adverse event in one of our hospitals as a real-life scenario, residents apply a number of tools used in conducting formal RCAs to analyze the adverse event and then focus on potential solutions to prevent further adverse events. A number of these interventions have been adopted to reduce harm across our hospitals and have also been presented at local and national conferences.

During PGY-3, residents continue their scholarly activities either in dedicated research blocks or as a longitudinal project.

Additional Research Opportunities

If you have an interest in conducting translational, clinical, or population-based research, you can apply to the clinical investigator residency track and complete a certification in Intensive Training in Research Statistics, Ethics, and Protocol Informatics and Design (INTREPID). The credits you earn from the certification are applicable to the MS in Clinical Investigation degree. In this program, you are paired with a clinical research mentor to ensure that you engage with research faculty early and regularly throughout your residency training.

Contact Us

Research in NYU Langone’s Department of Medicine is overseen by Glenn I. Fishman, MD, vice chair for research, and Peter S. Liang, MD, MPH, the residency program research director. If you have questions about research opportunities during residency, contact IMResidency@NYULangone.org.