Background: Doctorate in Medicine from Université de la Fondation Dr. Aristide

Placement: Yvonne L. Munn Center for Nursing Research, Massachusetts General Hospital

Learn more about the Fellowship HERE.

David was an accomplished physician in Haiti, with three years of experience treating patients in Haiti hospitals. Passionate about his work, he was dedicated to providing critical care. However, the growing instability and violence in Haiti forced him to make a life-altering decision: leaving behind his career and starting over in the US.

When first arriving in Massachusetts, he faced many challenges in reentering his field. Roadblocks such as language, lack of professional connections, lack of US experience, and more, left him stuck and forced to work a survival job that he was not proud of. He was in the US for a year and eight months before coming across the Fellowship. When he realized that he could be a good fit for the program, he was extremely excited. “The day I started my Fellowship, it was the first day that I felt a part of myself since coming to the US”, David says.

David was selected as a part of the Clinical Research Coordination track of the Fellowship and was placed in the Yvonne L. Munn Center for Nursing Research at Massachusetts General Hospital. Due to David’s background in the clinical field, he was not extremely familiar with the research side of things but was ready to learn, “Almost everything about research that I know now is from the fellowship”, David says.

Due to this fellowship, David feels more confident about getting back into the professional world, “I felt that I was growing up as a professional and as a person too, my professional network is broader now, and I have so many new skills”, he says. He also stresses the importance of taking opportunities like this to make it possible to achieve your long-term goals, “Every trained immigrant should take advantage of an opportunity like this”.