White Coat Diary asks Doximity members to share how they spend their days or nights inside and outside of the hospital, clinic, or office.
Ami B. Bhatt, MD is a clinician, educator and researcher in adult congenital heart disease. She innovates in telemedicine to provide subspecialty care in the community and empower young patients. Dr. Bhatt serves as an Assistant Professor of Medicine at Harvard Medical School and the Director of Outpatient Cardiology at the Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston. She blogs for Harvard Health Publishing and the HMS Global Academy. @AmiBhattMD
Name: Ami Bhatt, MD
Specialty: Cardiology, Adult Congenital Heart Disease
Institution: Massachusetts General Hospital
Location: Boston, MA
Morning
5am: Sunrise: Stir a little as my almost 5 year old cracks the bedroom door open and bounds into my bed to cuddle. She’s an adorable barnacle for the next hour on top of me.
6am: Rise and remember when I used to do Barre at 5am. Decide to do my 5 sets of 15 reps with dumbbells because at least it’s something.
7am: Ensure that the 5th grader is ready for school and headed down for breakfast, while I get the barnacle out of bed and ready. Scan multiple news feeds and twitter while she warms to the idea of school. Clear Epic EHR in-basket using Haiku.
8am: Catch up on personal phone calls while driving to work after dropping kids. Listen to Top40 to catch “people magazine” news and a laugh, see if NPR has something for me today.
9am: Clinic begins: some combination of rotating fellows, med-peds resident, NP with parallel practice, and a shadowing female college student join me. We see complex congenital heart disease patients, pregnant women with heart disease, and the occasional stressed out college student with chest pain and lightheadedness who needs to learn how to balance life now, so she is ok later.
Afternoon
12pm: Plan my keynote for the Congenital Heart Disease Walk in Boston. It’s always an honor and awe-inspiring to speak to patients, families and advocates. Jot down notes on empowerment, advocacy, resilience and inclusion.
1pm: Time for deep thoughts went too quickly. Engage in back-to-back conference calls about network development, rural cardiology telemedicine subspecialty clinic, and planning a western Massachusetts women in medicine event (need to stop being Boston-centric).
3pm: Dedicate time to write, either research or blogs. For the latter, I try to add to a few incomplete articles until one grabs me and then run with it. Debate on submission to JAMA Piece of My Mind vs. Kevin MD.
5pm: Send mentor/sponsor emails to junior physicians, nurses and trainees to check in on their projects. (Truthfully, deadlines and reminders always help motivate). Round on inpatients on the way out.
Evening
6pm: Drive home, call some patients back using Doximity Dialer, others from my personal number. Confirm the sitar player for my parents 50th anniversary party.
7pm: Meet kids at home, rejoice that the retired grandparents are back in town. Have a full house for dinner and marvel in the fact that we value nuclear family over extended family nowadays. Wonder if I would like an actual village rather than a “virtual” one.
8pm: School homework, “mom’s extra homework”, and clean dishes/laundry (despite the fact that the nanny will do it in the morning) for some deep seated “mammalian instinct/lioness does it all” reason.
9pm: Make party favors for upcoming birthday parties (I won’t be selling them on Etsy is all I’ll say). Sit with the laptop in bed and work on guideline recommendations and scientific statements (occasionally while on a conference call about the same). When there’s no call, a Shonda Rhimes show just might be on in the background.
10pm: Recall that screens are bad. Turn on my meditation app and listen to the rainforest, guided imagery or a story. Recall that morning meditation is an option tomorrow since my muscles are still sore from the 5 sets of 15.
11pm: Sleep, perchance dream. Happily await sunrise.
