In a recent article over at the DPC Journal, it’s suggested that DPC docs must know a set of six things in order to be successful with the Direct Care business model. Those traits and abilities include tenacity, passion, management of fear, failure and uncertainty, vision and task-specific confidence, planning and flexibility, and finally, rule-breaking.
Those are all crucial, and very telling characteristics of someone running their own practice, but we think they left one out. We’d like to add a #7 to this list.
Refusal to Settle
The healthcare industry has set so many precedents and standards; it’s tough to break the mold. Medical students are immediately overwhelmed by rules and regulations; it’s no wonder they feel trapped right out of the gate. But those who succeed in Direct Care are perpetually striving for better. Working toward improvement. Cutting through red tape to get where they want to go. Their vision for the kind of practice they always hoped existed drives them forward and they refuse to settle for what’s not working.
If we’re honest, the list of great characteristics of DPC docs is much longer than six or seven. The takeaway from all this is that the Direct Care movement is opening doors to physicians everywhere, allowing them to be the best version of themselves. Which directly results in the best version of their patients. And that’s what it’s all about.