I love being a nurse. I love my career--it turned out much better than I could ever imagined. Like many nurses who became nurses at a young age. I was only 17 when I entered my first nursing program. I was a person who tended to be soft-hearted and caring about others. All of us inherit different capacities and personality traits. Mine happened to be "other-oriented", so a career in nursing was a great fit for me. Over the years my curiosity about being able to offer "the best" of what I knew became the driving force to return to school for another 4 nursing degrees. A little bit of boredom with small town life in Idaho directly influenced my decision to return to school for another 6 years. The additional benefit of earning a PhD meant that I would have credibility and doors would open that were currently closed to me. I was going to be older in 6 years anyway---why not do something fun like return to school and put in 70-80 weeks for those 6 years? It certainly cured me of my boredom problem.

During the last year of my NP (nurse practitioner) residency, I was involved in patient care in the office setting across a variety of clinics. As graduation got closer and closer, my sense of dread grew bigger and bigger. I just wasn't able to do what everyone else was doing. I was very dissatisified with having to “turn around” an office visit in 15 minutes or less---and less was the expectation of any new boss. It felt awful to rush through visits and I couldn’t do it.

That's when my wonderful husband, Glenn, told me to suck it up and start my own clinic. He couldn't understand why I would be so worried about something that was never meant to be--I wasn't meant to be employed by a physician. Plus, you really don't want to hear about the disappointing experiences I've had in sitting down with a potential physician employer only to have the conversation never move away from "why did I get a PhD?" question and being told I was overqualified for the position and no job offer was forthcoming from any physician. I was meant to be self-employed so I could provide health care services differently than every one else!

That was the beginning of Doctor Kara, PC. By the way, The PC stands for "professional corporation" and not for personal computers. Apparently the 411 folks misdirected several customers who needed personal computer repair my way because of the "PC" part of the clinic title. In Utah any person who must hold a special degree and licensure in order to practice in their field (ie, nurses, doctors) must form a PC instead of an LLC when forming a corporation.

So the day after I passed by board exam, I sat down and started writing a business plan and deriving the concepts of the "DK"  (Doctor Kara) model of health care service. It wasn't as hard as you might think. I simply thought about all the things I had seen and heard over the years of my nursing career, my strengths and weaknesses as a person and as a professional and the DK concepts emerged pretty rapidly. Many of the key DK concepts would never work in the generic clinic setting we all know and often hate. I thought about the amount of time many people spend waiting for health care services, how rapidly a patient is cycled through a visit, how dissatified everyone felt about what was happening or what they were doing, the survival mentality of the nurses and doctors I worked with over the years, the lost hope, the resignation, the indignity, the malpractice, the accidental harm, the avoidable mistakes, the string of phone calls that are made to find a clinic who takes uninsured patients, the extra amounts of money the uninsured paid at traditional clinics, etc.  

From all those experiences, the key concepts of DK emerged: on-time appointment keeping, house calls, visits that are personalized and attentive, soft music and lighting in the clinic, snacks and drinks for visitors, but most of all---the insurance companies were not invited--so they can't control how I choose to serve patients. Having a small clinic to run all by your lonesome is definitely not fun and games. It's a lot of serious hard work for which you will be the last to be paid---yes, I have been without a pay check for 18 months now and it will probably be another 18-24 months before I take home my very first dollar to my husband, but the rewards are well worth the sacrifice. I serve people and their health needs to the very best of my ability and under the best possible circumstances---all based on what their individual needs and wants--that is priceless in my book.