Embracing Change

Change. It’s a word that can stir a variety of emotions in us. For some, change can bring excitement or a sense of adventure. For others, it can be a daunting thing to hear and often feel overwhelming. However, to have personal growth, we must embrace change.

I remember when my vision to do better for patients started. It was about a year out of Physician Assistant school and I was coming back from maternity leave after having our second child. It seemed to be a breeze at first, until more and more appointments were being fit in and I had less time to see my patients, and less time to take care of myself and my family. Powering through this, by working through my lunch hour or after hours, seemed like the easiest solution at the time.

We often fall into routines that bring us stability and ignore the red flags, so onward I pushed. I was told many times that this was normal for primary care, normal for healthcare workers. About three years later and a panel size of 2,000 patients, I was getting ready to go on maternity leave again with our last child. I was under pressure again to do more, add on appointments before my leave, room my own patients, as I had a nurse who just went on an educational leave of absence. I found myself often doing double the work, without additional time to do so. What use to be 20-25 minutes with patients, started to be crunched into 10-15 minutes. My body wasn’t happy and it told me that in various ways, that were palpable in every aspect of my life.

Once I was out on leave, I remember thinking this couldn’t be it, this couldn’t be all there was to healthcare. I felt drained and not because I had a new baby (we are all tired during these moments!!) I was tired of the system. The system that I felt was not only wrecking me, but frankly failing the healthcare workers and the patients. I wanted to get to know my patients, get to know their families, their life outside the clinic, what they were doing for their careers, what trips they had planned with their families. How can you do that in 10 minutes? That’s when I knew a change needed to happen.

I remember the day I left corporate medicine like it was yesterday. I walked out of the building for the last time and felt like I had a pep in my step and a breath of fresh air, I may have even drove home with the music on blast to some salt n’ peppa (90’s girl at heart), singing at the top of my lungs and my sunroof cracked wide open (I’m sure funny to those that witnessed it). A world of possibilities ahead of me….

After I transitioned into a new adventure of private practice, the vision I had to do better, carried with me. I was able to start seeing patients like I envisioned: with time. Time to review all the recommended health screenings, answer their questions or concerns, but also time to get to know them. For the first time in years, I was able to sit and joke or laugh with my patients, celebrate victories with them, get to know them, hug them and sometimes even cry with them. This was it for me….but: What is that Dr. Suess quote we all know? “You’ll be on your way up, you’ll be seeing great sights. You’ll join the high fliers, who soar on high heights….. Except when you don’t, because sometimes you won’t.”

We often become accustomed to the familiar, even if that familiar is no longer serving us or our purpose. To dive into purpose, takes a lot of soul searching and time, 15 months to be exact for me. It requires you to step out of your comfort zone, confront your fears and be open to new possibilities. Those great heights I felt I climbed, over time, fizzled out. I slowly started to realize it wasn’t the company I worked for, it was the system, and no matter where I would go, the insurance-based system for primary care was and is very broken. It was evident that it was driving my distaste for medicine and crushing my soul values of quality over quantity.

My vision was simple: to do better. Over those months, I spent time researching and discussing with friends and colleagues on what path to take forward and how to approach this new model in medicine, especially in the Midwest. Let’s face it, I’m a long-term Midwesterner, and the sentiment towards change is often met with hesitation. We like tradition, familiarity, and find comfort in reliability. But we also strongly value hard work, family and a sense of community.

Those same strong core values that I believe in, I also found embedded in the center of Direct Primary Care: a sense of community. When I started to look into this concept, I was met with so many others that wanted to do better! So many that felt the same way I did. We all want our patients to feel like family in our office, to feel comfortable and a sense of belonging. We want to be a voice for the community and an advocate to do better in our medical community. While the pace of change may be slower in the Midwest, it doesn’t mean that innovation is absent. Discovering Direct Primary Care, has helped me rediscover the timeless value that the patient-provider relationship holds. It has helped reassure me that the current state of our healthcare system, should not be considered the “norm” and I knew we needed to change that. Our monthly membership-based model is founded on the idea of challenging the status quo and offering a new approach to healthcare. While this may be a difficult concept to grasp at first, I challenge you to dig deeply into what your values are. What do you envision for your healthcare goals? Who do you want by your side during your health journey?

Challenging the norms means opening yourself up to new possibilities. It is through this process that growth and transformation can truly take place, evolving us into the best versions of ourselves. Direct Primary Care has brought back life into me, reminded me of my WHY and what I was placed on Earth to do…to care for others in a way that I was taught to do, with compassion, time and unwavering support. While change can be hard work, remember it can also bring great rewards that are immeasurable.

Stay tuned for more insights and inspiration from Resurgent Health, where we believe that change is not just a possibility – it's a promise.

Posted by Aly Dahl, PA-C: Resurgent Health on 04/20/2024. “My Why”