“ I came into the Developmental and Behavioral fellowship at Tufts Medical Center at Tufts Medical Center with high expectations, and yet the training has exceeded my expectations on a daily basis. My first year of training included a multi-disciplinary team discussion and brain-storming session before and after each patient clinical evaluation, to match testing strategies, analysis, and recommendations to the unique profile of every child. Moreover, every Fellow-Patient interaction was observed in real time by the assigned attending through a two way mirror, with immediate and effective actionable performance feedback. Another surprise was how dynamic the curriculum is; the educators constantly helped me in exploring my personal and career goals and actively directed me towards making a plan to reach them, even allowing me to redesign the fellowship focus and details to fit. Add to this a sincerely supportive staff who take to heart the mission of “helping every child to thrive and helping every fellow to reach their potential”, and you can imagine the astonishing first year learning curve, both in personal and career development. I am now in my second year and can start focusing on research, as the program has one year of protected research time. My clinical training now is shifting to maneuvering the complex system involved in this specialty, as well as preparing me for real-life practice with focus on problem-solving and continuing professional growth. What I like most about this program is that it is on the one hand small enough to allow an “open door” policy where I feel free to seek advice and feedback on the fly from all attendings and staff, and on the other hand large enough and includes some of the most respected developmental pediatricians in the field to allow for an almost limitless potential of career directions and opportunities. I thank my lucky stars every day that I have chosen this program for my training. “
Modar Sukkarieh
Pediatric Developmental Behavioral Fellowship ‘19
