Geriatrics Fellowship at The Mount Sinai Hospital

Our mission is to advance healthcare and quality of life for older adults and those with serious illnesses. The Mount Sinai Hospital provides a uniquely enriching and diverse training environment for our fellows and the opportunity to work alongside leaders in Geriatric Medicine and beyond. We strive to develop geriatricians who become leaders in academic and clinical geriatrics ad to enable graduates to obtain certification in geriatric medicine by the American Board of Internal Medicine or the American Board of Family Practice. Our one- or two-year program is one of the largest in the country. Our graduates have a 100 percent pass rate on the American Board of Internal Medicine Geriatric Certifying exam and provide care across multiple healthcare settings both nationally and internationally

Our two-year geriatrics fellowship program emphasizes leadership, scholarly activity, and research, including 40 percent protected time to train you as a clinician-educator. The core curriculum for protected academic time includes leadership skills, research skills, quality improvement, and evidence-based medicine in the areas of geriatric and palliative care.

We offer departmental support for you to attend regional and national conferences, many of which will showcase your scholarly projects. Additionally, all our fellows attend the Intensive Update with Board Review in Geriatric and Palliative Medicine free of charge.

We offer one-year and two-year fellowship training programs. The one-year fellowship is clinically focused and can be complementary to individuals with other fellowship training in areas such as endocrinology, cardiology, rheumatology, or gastroenterology, although this is not a requirement for applying. Two-year fellows complete all clinical requirements during the first year of the fellowship program, during which we emphasize ambulatory continuity and acute care at various clinical sites, inpatient clinical care, in-hospital co-management consultative services, and long-term care. The second year focuses on research, and you may choose one of the following fellowship tracks:

  • Clinician-Educator, with comprehensive and mentored experiences, curriculum development both online and off, expanded experience in curriculum evaluation, and the Harvard Macy Course for Program Postgraduate-Graduate Trainees Future Academic Leaders
  • Clinical Research, with protected time to work one-on-one on a clinical research project with a mid-level or senior faculty member
  • Health Policy and Administration, which provides mentored experiential time in hospital administration with a mid-level faculty member or experiential time as a medical director of a nursing home

Learn more about our curriculum

We offer several special programs and honors:

Hartford Geriatrics Center of Excellence
As a designated Center of Excellence (CoE) in Geriatrics by the John A. Hartford Foundation, we offer additional specialized training to help you become a successful geriatric educator and academic leader. You can apply for this opportunity during your third year in the fellowship.

Master Clinician-Educator Program in Geriatrics
We have embedded a one-year clinician-educator program into this program to help you evolve into an expert educator in geriatric medicine. We cover teaching principles, specific skills to teach geriatrics, evidence-based geriatrics, systems-based practice, evaluation and assessment techniques, and quality improvement principles that focus on key issues in caring for older adults.

Geriatrics and Palliative Medicine Journal Club
Run by fellows and attended by learners from other departments and those doing a geriatrics clerkship, this club aims to build competency in critical appraisal techniques and apply peer-reviewed evidence to the care of older and seriously ill adults. We call upon the latest medical findings to frame questions during clinical sessions.

Fellowship Honors

Chief Fellow: Should you be selected by faculty for this position (late in the first year), you fulfill a variety of leadership duties and administrative tasks throughout your second year. This is considered a leadership award and includes additional salary compensation. 

Research Award: This award recognizes excellence in geriatric medicine, based on your practice as well as your presentation of your research project to the department.

Evaluation is an important component of the academic experience. In our fellowship program, faculty members review and critique all patient assessments, comprehensive care plans, and follow-up care that you provide, and they will use the ACGME The Milestones 2.0 to evaluate each fellow’s individualized progress. We use the criteria developed by the American Board of Internal Medicine and compute average scores at the end of the year for accreditation purposes.

The Clinical Competency Committee meets quarterly to review these clinical and research evaluations as well as any verbal feedback. The program director meets with you at least twice a year to discuss strengths and weaknesses and provide suggestions for improvement. When you receive a satisfactory performance evaluation, you advance to a higher level of responsibility and ultimately graduate from the program.

After each rotation, you complete an evaluation online. We encourage you to provide verbal feedback at any time. We encourage honest and open communication with your fellowship leadership, individual faculty member, or the chief fellow confidently at any time. 

We are particularly interested in applicants who are concerned with health care for an aging and geriatric population.

We select fellows through the Medicine Subspecialty Match, which is part of the National Residency Match Program. You must submit your application through the Electronic Residency Application System (ERAS), along with all supporting documents. We require, in addition to the application form, the following materials:

  • Current curriculum vitae 
  • Personal statement 
  • Final medical school transcript 
  • Three letters of recommendation 
  • United States Medical Licensing Examination transcript 
  • Dean’s letter and medical school performance evaluation

To apply or to receive further information, email randy.bradford@mssm.edu or call 212-241-8110.

  • Program Director: Vanessa Rodriguez, MD
  • Associate Program Director: Kinga Kiszko, DO
  • Program Coordinator: Randy Bradford

Fellowship programs we offer: 

A new opportunity is the Time-Variable Competency Based Midcareer Geriatrics Fellowship (contact Randy Bradford for further information about How to Apply to this program).

You should apply approximately one year before you would like to join us, usually during your PGY-3 year or final year of fellowship training.

We participate in visa programs J-1, H-1-B, but require that you reside in the United States; we do not consider those living abroad.