Deepak L. Bhatt, MD, MPH, Director of Mount Sinai Heart, provides his take on work- life balance for trainees in a video interview conducted at the American College of Cardiology meeting. It’s important to make sure that even as you get busier that you focus on your family when you are not at work, and perhaps give up some hobbies, he says. You might consider giving up your Saturday golf game, and perhaps taking the family to professional meetings, he says. The interview was conducted by Solomon Bienstock, MD, Cardiology Fellow at The Mount Sinai Hospital.
All right. I'm here with doctor New Director of Mount Sinai Heart. I'm Solomon Beans, one of the chief cardiology fellow in Mount Sinai. So doctor, but I want to talk about well being mental health and work life balance. Uh The first question I had is, you know, you're a world renowned clinician and scientist, but you're also a devoted father and husband. I personally am a fellow in training with a family. So what's your secret to achieving successful work life balance? It's a great question. First of all, I don't honestly know that I have a secret, but I will at least provide some sort of opinions and maybe advice. So I think if you have a family, you really want to put them ahead of everything else. That's kind of a trite statement to make. I know, but cardiology is a busy life as a fellow. If one chooses to go into advanced fellowship, it continues to be busy. And the sad truth is once you join the ranks of attendings, life doesn't actually get any easier or less stressful. It's nice to pretend that it will, that helps keep us going. But it's the same as, you know, when you're an intern, you think, oh, things will be better when I'm a resident and then when you, when I'm a fellow and when I'm an advanced fellow, but, you know, that delayed sort of gratification never really comes to be totally honest. There's always something that's pushing the limits of time and energy. So that really doesn't change. I, I mean, really, it does get to be more of everything, more work, more stress when one isn't attending. I, I hate to tell you that, but that's just the truth. That's life. But I think then in terms of family, it's really important to make sure that as you're really busy, maybe getting even busier, maybe after you promised your spouse that things are gonna get a lot better, you know, that you focus on your family when you're not at work. And, you know, sometimes people that are really talented have a bunch of different hobbies, which is great. But, you know, it's hard to keep up all your hobbies, keep up with everything else that you might have been doing in life, keep up with work and then keep up with the potentially growing families will be the case with many young people that are fellows. So, you know, for example, um I think I would love to go golf on Saturdays, but I don't do it because I spend Saturdays with my family. Well, I'm spending Saturdays here now with AC C but if I'm not in a meeting or in general I, I would do things with my family and that sort of thing and, you know, maybe I should have gotten my kids to like golf or something and done it with them. But they, they're not golfers. So, you know, it is a matter of sacrificing things and nothing in life is free. So I think you have to give up things sometimes to have other things. And I guess one thing I almost hate verbalizing this, but, you know, I used to have a lot of hobbies now. I don't have a lot of hobbies, but I do spend a lot of time, you know, with my family. So that's how I've sort of managed to have a pretty busy professional life, you know, clinically, but also in terms of research, traveling to meetings and that sort of thing, but still, you know, trying to maintain family life. Another thing too is traveling, you know, there when possible, sometimes it can be good to take the family along when I was younger. I always used to do that back when, you know, AC C used to be in Orlando. I would take them along and we spend some time in Disney World. I must say though, as I got busier that became less appealing to them when I started six AM meetings and coming back at 11 because I was waking them up in the morning and waking them up at night. So then we actually stopped trying to combine vacations with work. But, you know, for folks that maybe aren't quite as busy earlier on, that can be a nice way to combine family and work time. If you want to watch more videos like this, go to youtube dot com slash fits on the go.