A Day in the Life of MICH Researcher Carrie Daymont

Published by: michadmin on July 12th, 2012

I woke up at 6.  I checked Twitter and my favorite news sites, and listened to the morning news while I got ready for work. I got to spend a few minutes with my husband while we stopped by Tim’s on the way to work.

This morning I had a research meeting at 8 with two other MICH members – Kristy Wittmeier, a physiotherapist, and Gayle Restall, an occupational therapist. We talked for two hours planning new studies, and I learned a lot of about new issues in child development.

I walked over to the other side of campus to the office of the Child Health Quality Team, where I recently started as medical director. The Quality Team has always been evidence-oriented, and I hope that through connections with MICH, I can be a part of creating more new evidence that will help us take better, safer care of our patients.

On the way, I ran into one of the child neurologists. We talked about our vacations, and I hit him up for some advice about a friend of the family with a medical question. Then I got to work fixing up a presentation on growth curves for the pediatric residents next week.

In the afternoon I had a call with two research collaborators. Three years ago at the Pediatric Academic Societies conference in Baltimore, I introduced two friends from different institutions because they had similar interests. Now we are finalizing the revisions to the first paper that we wrote together. After the call, I read some papers, answered some e-mails and completed a few discharge summaries for patients from my recent time serving as the attending physician for inpatients in Children’s Hospital.

I arrived home around 6 p.m. and made dinner. My husband handles the dishes, so I get to relax after dinner is made 

After dinner, I checked Twitter and the news again, and did some planning for our upcoming trip to Philadelphia and North Carolina later this month. Then I edited a manuscript and, well, wrote this blog entry. I’ll try to get to sleep by 10 p.m., because I am much happier and more efficient when I have a good night’s sleep.

I love variety, which is the main reason I chose to stay in general pediatrics rather than pursue a subspecialty.  Between my research at MICH, my clinical work in the hospital, and my quality work, I have lots of variety.  I have really enjoyed my first two years at MICH. Everyone has been very supportive of me, and it is very energizing to be around so many researchers and staff who are excited about pediatric research. I really look forward to having the chance to work with more people at MICH in the coming years.