SUMMARY
Anjali Bhagra, M.B.B.S., is a clinical investigative internist exploring and integrating ultrasound technology into medical training and practice. She is also a stress and resilience expert with keen interest in sex-specific differences in wellness and resilience.
Dr. Bhagra's research interests include point-of-care technologies and their complementary role in graduate and postgraduate medical training and clinical applications of point-of-care ultrasound by nontraditional users at the bed side.
Dr. Bhagra's current research program focuses on stress and resilience from multiple points of view: enhancing resilience, decreasing stress and anxiety, healthy aging through optimism and happiness, leadership and resilience, work-life balance, sex differences, and stress reduction in women, health care professionals and trainees.
Dr. Bhagra focuses on enhancing understanding of sex-specific differences in stress, resiliency and burnout.
Focus areas
- Understanding the scope and impact of point-of-care ultrasound technology and its applications for innovating and enhancing medical education across graduate and postgraduate levels. Dr. Bhagra collaborates nationally in multi-institution initiatives to study and implement ultrasound technology in an evidence-based way across the learning continuum.
- Clinical applications of point-of-care ultrasound imaging in various clinical settings at the bed side to provide high quality, timely and effective care. Dr. Bhagra and her colleagues aim to find clinical applications for ultrasound imaging to improve patient care.
- Stress. Dr. Bhagra's research group is studying the perceived need and implementation of mindfulness-based stress management plans in a wide variety of patients, including cancer patients, as well as health care providers, including physicians, nursing and allied health staff, to promote overall wellness. This work is especially valid in the landscape of increasing burnout reports within health care personnel.
- Women and stress. Dr. Bhagra is investigating sex-specific differences in stress, particularly with regard to metabolic and cardiac health, and is working to establish an effective intervention based on the construct of resilience to address the risk of future cardiovascular disease in women experiencing moderate levels of stress.
- Resilience training. Dr. Bhagra studies the role of resilience in disease and wellness; the research conducted by her group revolves around testing the basic framework of resilience in disease, health and healthy aging. The ultimate mission of Dr. Bhagra and her colleagues is to maximize human potential to achieve satisfying and productive trajectories in life over time.
Significance to patient care
Dr. Bhagra's research goal is to understand and devise a feasible training and practice model to employ point-of-care imaging in providing state-of-the-art, timely and accurate clinical care by health care providers across all specialty areas. Through Dr. Bhagra's stress and resilience research, she ultimately hopes to develop better tools to help mitigate effects of stress on overall health and wellness.