Dr. T  0:00  
Owners of a direct care practice are more likely to experience higher job satisfaction than the insurance based practice. And it's no wonder why direct care is independent of insurance. Patients pay the doctor directly for their expertise. The doctor gets full autonomy in how they care for patients and how they get paid. They have chosen this path with a love of medicine. This is the direct care way. 

Dr. T  0:24  
By listening to this podcast, you may even start to believe that you too can have a successful direct care practice. Come listen with an open mind as I share my personal journey and how I pivoted from an insurance based practice to direct care. Right in the middle of the pandemic, and the valuable lessons along the way. This podcast may be the very thing you need to revitalize your medical practice. I'm your host, owner of a direct care podiatry practice Dr. Tea Nguyen.

Dr. T  0:52  
Hey there. Welcome back. This episode I'm going to talk about why I started to bawl like a baby. Why was I crying? So I was cleaning out my closet trying to stay organized, and I found my big box of magnifying loops. What I used to use when I was doing microvascular surgery, this was a time in my career my experiences were I just loved everything that I did anything that had to do with limb salvage limb preservation, keeping people active deformity, correction, everything. And I absorbed every experience I had like a little kid discovering the playground. 

Dr. T  1:31  
For the first time, there was even a point where I was the most sponsored physician for this one company relative to a typical DPM. And I think if you look online, it was the Sunshine Act where they have to report how much money was contributed to a physician if you were to go out for lunch or dinner for a lectured event, whatever there was a year where I was like the most sponsor person. So anyway, open up this box, and I found all the cords tangled up. And there's these two battery packs, I wanted to check to see if they still work. So as I was detangling the cords and plugging it into the outlet, checking to see if it worked. I found myself starting to cry. Like heavily. I was bawling all by myself in my little office at home. 

Dr. T  2:20  
And at the same time, I was flooded with the best memories of my training the time right after a residency my fellowship year plus the waiting year, I call it the waiting year because I was waiting for my husband to finish his residency. His surgical residency was five years. podiatry was three years and so I had a year fellowship and the neck gap year I did the most with it I traveled I went to Taiwan to shadow with the world's renowned micro vascular surgeon, plastic surgeons and all that I found myself crying. And I felt kind of a mourning I was I was also morning, who I was and who I was becoming because I was a totally different person back then. I was so hopeful for my future my career as a pediatric surgeon saving limbs, doing the most advanced techniques, and I was really pushing for what is possible for podiatrist, I was alongside with people who are pushing the envelope further and further as to what the scope of Podiatry is. 

Dr. T  3:26  
And so those were some really amazing time. And then suddenly, at this moment, as I'm cleaning out my closet, looking at my loops, and the tangled wires are realized that this is history. This is something that was really no longer part of my identity. My practice today is incredibly different than what I envisioned for myself when I was going through training. Right now I'm an owner of a direct care practice. People are not paying me to perform microvascular surgeries, they're not paying me to perform these flaps, these important limb preserving techniques. And my first exposure to micro vascular surgery was in residency the last year of my residency in 2013 2014. And looking back, that was really only eight years ago. So much has changed in eight years. And what I wanted to share with you today is that you may not necessarily know what your future is going to be, especially if you go at it day to day, not really planning for that future. 

Dr. T  4:38  
You won't really know where you'll be five years from now, even 10 years from now. I mean looking back eight years what I thought my practice would look like it is completely not that at all. So you don't really know what your future holds. And you don't really know if what your dream practice looks like. You don't really know if it's going to be within reach or not. You may even have a Life changes, that changes your entire priority of what your career is going to look like, you won't know that the job you currently hold is going to bring you fulfillment, these are things you just don't know. And the more you accept of things happening, the more you let go of how things are supposed to be, then you'll really get to see how you're supposed to be enjoying life and all the different changes and obstacles you encounter. So sometimes when we get into a routine, a comfortable routine, where we just kind of show up to work, do our thing and get paid and move on. 

Dr. T  5:33  
And we do this day in and day out, we don't really recognize how much time has passed by until we take a breath. Until we take a moment to appreciate that journey. It was like back from time to time. In the last eight years, I completed a fellowship. And I was employed twice before I started to create my own practice, I had moved to three different states, I had my daughter, I flipped my current practice three times over within a span of two years. And today, I don't even know if what I'm doing now is what I will continue to be doing in the continuing years, I finally let go of how things should be and really embrace being human, embracing the dynamic changes of what my priorities are having my daughter was a huge change to my entire practice. And this may sound unsettling or exciting. I mean, it really is the cards are in your hands, how you respond to that. And what I discovered today, in this experience, as I was crying as I was mourning, I was hanging on to these surgical loops for well over eight years, because I thought that was still part of my identity. But in reality, holding on to it didn't do a whole lot for me, other than it being a memento and sentimental product. 

Dr. T  6:55  
Now I had to let go of this because what good is it doing if it's sitting in my closet not being used. And then I came to accept that I am moving on to a whole new chapter in my life, one that accounts a life with my daughter, and being available to her. That meant I needed to create a business that gave me time flexibility and job satisfaction, because I'm insistent on having it all. And how I define having it all is going to be totally different to how you define what having it all for you is, and I shouldn't be the one to define that for you, you have to decide what that looks like for yourself. And sometimes that means letting go of things that don't serve you anymore. So letting go of wanting to do these highly complex cases, in these academic institutions. That wasn't my future anymore. I happen to live in a town that doesn't offer academic support. So it would be impossible to live that life to provide that service in the capacity that I wanted to. 

Dr. T  7:56  
So I had to adapt, I had to become another version of myself of my future and really let go of this past of thinking. That's how it should have been. That's how life was supposed to be. And instead, I decided that I'm moving forward, and I'm letting go of something that didn't serve me anymore. And I'm choosing a path that fits my new priorities. So the lesson in this is not necessarily to give up your dream, please don't take it as that. Sometimes the things that we wish should have been like we wish we could have been employed. Happily, we wish we would have had that ideal partner or that ideal boss to work for that may never happen. And you might have to adapt and change the course, the real essence I really want you to take away from today is this. You never really know where you'll be if you don't stop to make intentional decisions. Every single day should be a day of living in intent. And in these actions. It's going to reveal a lesson like a fork in the road, you get you encounter obstacles, and then you have to make a choice and how you respond and move forward.

Dr. T  9:05  
Do you sit here and wallow in the idea that the insurance based practice or the employee practice is just what it is? Or do you make the intentional decision to create a new future that requires you to do something really different because how you think now to arrive to where you are currently is not going to serve you in your new future. You have to think differently and you have to adapt to those changes. Another part of this is it's okay to let go of what you thought was supposed to be and embrace a new future priorities will change and you are allowed to change your own story. You are the person writing it so you can decide how you want to end it. And then lastly, if you don't stop to appreciate something every day, you're going to miss the point of living and all of these years are just going to pass you by i know how scary and uncertain the future is every day is an opportunity to create your future. If you truly want to direct your practice, you have to be honest with yourself, you have to have that honest discussion about what is holding you back, that no longer serves you. Is it the idea that insurance based practice is safe? Is it really safe? Or did we see a mass exodus or a mass firing from corporations, somebody had lightly called Corporate medicine right now, they are the corporate cartel, you literally cannot win a system that was not designed for doctors or for patients. It's a system designed for profits, and everybody else in between gets hurt. 

Dr. T  10:33  
So you have to decide what that thought that you have? Is it serving you to move forward? Or is it holding you back? And the thought might be that the insurance based practice is the only way to practice medicine, when I'm showing you that is certainly not true. So think about what thoughts you're having that's holding you back from your true desires, to have freedom in your schedule to have freedom and how you practice medicine to make as much money as you could possibly want. What are the thoughts that are holding you back from that dream? So I had been holding on these loops for a long time, they had been out of service for many, many years. Because I always thought in the back of my mind, maybe one day, maybe one day, I'll come back to this maybe one day, I'll have a different opportunity. Maybe one day things will change. And I will come back to what I thought my future was going to look like. But the reality is, this is just clutter. It's clutter in my home. And it's clutter in my brain. 

Dr. T  11:25  
These are the thoughts that were not serving me. So I needed to be more intentional about the things that I love in my space that was taking up rooms, and that includes the thoughts that I was having. So I want you to think about that. What are the thoughts that you have that's holding you back from your dream, practice what no longer serves you and you need to let go in order to create that dream direct care practice, write it out, reflect on it and get out a piece of paper or a journal and just have a massive brain dump. Write out exactly everything that you're thinking, without logic, just scribble it all out, and then take a moment to reflect on it. I hope this exercise is going to reveal the answers for you on what you need to do next. That's all I got for today. See you next week. 

Dr. T  12:09  
Thank you so much for being here with me. If you enjoyed this episode and want to hear more, please like, share and subscribe so more people like you can have access to another way of practicing medicine, that direct care way. Let's connect find my info in the show notes and send me your questions. That might be the topic for future episodes. 

Dr. T  12:28  
And lastly, if you remember nothing else, remember this be the energy you want to attract. See you next time