The Worthy Physician

Finding Your Professional Nirvana

• Dr. Sapna Shah-Haque MD

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Dr. Kaur takes us on a deeply personal journey from traditional healthcare settings to founding her own direct primary care practice, which she calls her "professional nirvana." After nearly a decade in corporate medicine, including positions at prestigious institutions, she found herself facing a critical realization: her mental health was suffering in ways that hadn't happened even during profound personal tragedy.

"When my mental health started to get affected by my job, that's when I realized – this is just a job," she reflects. This moment became the catalyst for a four-year process of introspection that ultimately led her to launch her own practice. The transition wasn't easy – it required draining retirement accounts and facing significant financial uncertainty. Yet despite these challenges, she describes being happier than ever because she can finally practice medicine aligned with her values.

Through candid conversation, Dr. Kaur dismantles the notion that physician happiness should be secondary to patient care. She explains how direct primary care enables her to have meaningful conversations with patients about all aspects of their health – discussions that often surprise patients accustomed to rushed healthcare encounters. "I can actually give care in the amount and to the degree which care is needed and be fulfilled that I did my best," she explains.

Perhaps most poignantly, she shares that one of her father's final reflections was regretting that he spent his life working to meet others' expectations rather than pursuing what truly made him happy. Whether you're considering a similar path or simply seeking greater fulfillment in your current role, this conversation offers a valuable perspective on creating a sustainable, joy-filled medical career. Connect with Dr. Kaur on Instagram @drkkaurmd or via email at kkaurmd@kkaurmd.com.


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Though I am a physician, this is not medical advice. This is only a tool that physicians can use to get ideas on how to deal with burnout and/or know they are not alone. If you are in need of medical assistance talk to your physician.


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Dr. Shah-Haque:

I'm happy to be here talking with Dr Kaur and she's going to give us her background and really how she moved from stereotypical patient care and took what she had learned and what she had dreamt about and really carved out her own little piece of paradise. Dr Kaur, thank you so much for being here.

Dr. Kaur:

Thank you for having me. I especially am excited to talk about the things that I'm going to try to talk about and highlight today, because I don't think this is addressed enough. So thank you, thank you for having me.

Dr. Shah-Haque:

Yeah, and before the recording, I loved everything you had to say because you're right, we're going to get into some conversations or topics that we shy away from. I think within medicine, early in our career, early within training, even in medical school, and these are some of the conversations that I openly have with my residents and medical students. But before we get to that, tell us a little bit more about you, where you're at your career, and then take us back a few steps and tell us how you got here.

Dr. Kaur:

Sure. So I am board certified in primary care and lifestyle medicine, and by primary care I should specify family medicine. I have a DPC slash concierge practice here in South Florida and I opened up about a year and a half ago after having been in the corporate medicine field, I guess you could say, for almost a decade. Actually, today marks 10 years since residency, graduation. Yay, I thought I'd be where I am sooner, but it takes time, it takes courage, it takes support. It takes so much to get to your professional nirvana and I think when the wasn't, because the journey has been great and I've learned a lot. I think one of the things I've learned the most is knowing when to be true to myself and true to my calling, because, like many physicians, this is to me a calling and I feel like recognizing that is priority, recognizing what makes you happy to come to work every day, why you're doing what you're doing is very important, and you're right, that doesn't get taught in school or even in residency, and we often push it under the rug because we as physicians feel like emotions are important. How we feel isn't important. What makes us happy isn't important. Because we are a physician, we exist to serve others and ourselves, we put on the back burner, which is so unfortunate.

Dr. Kaur:

It took some tumultuous experiences to get me here, one of them being when I was in med school. In the middle of med school I lost my father and I lost the will to continue schooling, because he was my biggest cheerleader and my best friend. I was a typical daddy girl and he supported my journey. And when I say supported, I should clarify and I always do because when you come from I'm of Indian origin, my parents are Indian. When you come from an Indian family, the expectation is that you're going to be a doctor and that just wasn't the case for me. For me, it was more. I wanted to do it. So they supported me and I think it's important to make that distinction.

Dr. Kaur:

And when I lost him, that just all went down the drain. I was like what am I even continuing? For? I took a year off to manage our family business to help my grieving mom, and I did put my own grief on the back burner because I had to. I just I had to step up to the plate and do what needed to be done and there wasn't time for me to be sad or for me to process my feelings. And then, about a year into it, things started to settle down and I had conversations with my mom and she said it's time to get back up on the horse. It's time to get back to you because you've given yourself up for this past year. And if she hadn't pushed me, I don't think I would have come back, not because I didn't want to, but because I was just. I was in that place and she made me recognize my feelings and the importance of what's going to make me happy for the rest of my life, because she knew I was not going to be happy if I didn't do this.

Dr. Kaur:

And so I went back to school, did what I needed to do, graduated residency and moved back to South Florida. I trained in New Jersey, so I was away from home, which made things even more difficult and I came back home and I was fortunate to get my. What I thought at the time was my dream job at Cleveland Clinic down here as a staff physician. Job at Cleveland Clinic down here as a staff physician, traditional primary care, seeing patients, 15 to 20 patients a day, and the normal thing that a lot of us primary care doctors experience. And I was having fun doing it. I loved it. I was bright-eyed, bushy-tailed, yeah. The first couple years I was just so grateful I was exactly where I wanted to be.

Dr. Kaur:

And then the rose-colored glasses started to come off as things got more difficult and when I say difficult, not difficult in the sense that pathology got difficult or I couldn't handle my patients, not anything like that it was the demands of the system and the corporate environment just overpowered the kind of patient care I was able to give that a lot of us are able to give, and I know a lot of us are in this position. And I started to get to a point that it started to affect my mental health. And I'm a person who I would think has a pretty strong basis. I have a great support network. I feel internally I have very strong coping mechanisms. Even when I went through everything I went through with my father's passing, I grieved appropriately, but it never turned into anything clinical. I didn't have anxiety, didn't have panic attacks, I didn't have clinical depression. I would say I handled it pretty well from a mental health standpoint.

Dr. Kaur:

So when it started to, when my mental health started to get affected by my job, that's when I was like this is my job? I didn't. This didn't even happen when my dad died. Why is this happening? For a job? That's just a job, and I keep saying that because that needs to be highlighted. It is just a job. Yes, it's a calling. You're caring for your patients and that's so important. But you can't pour from an empty cup. And when my cup drained, that's when I was like I need to make a change. I either need to leave medicine or I need to look for other opportunities and other things that I can do with my education and with my passion.

Dr. Kaur:

And so I made the decision to leave a very cushy job at the Cleveland Clinic and move on to another healthcare organization down here in South Florida Baptist Health and I was very happy with the change. They were transforming into a telemedicine practice and this was before the pandemic and they needed a physician to lead that transformation. And I was offered the opportunity and I had no idea what I was doing, because at the time telemedicine wasn't as huge as it is post-pandemic. It was an experiment and I was just again bright-eyed and bushy-tailed to do something and I took it on and it was great. But then eventually the rigmarole started again the demands of the system that just didn't make sense for patient care, and then how it was spreading me thin and I wasn't really able to practice the way I wanted to practice. That started to all come back. Fortunately, this time I didn't let it get to this space where it was affecting my physical health so sorry, my mental health and I recognized the pattern and I said it's time to make a change again, because this time I'm leaving medicine for good if I don't find my professional nirvana.

Dr. Kaur:

And I know a lot of physicians, especially more seasoned physicians. When I say things like that, they're like what do you mean? Professional nirvana, you're not supposed to be happy, you're just supposed to come to work, see your patients, be grateful that you're a doctor and you're in this noble profession. And I was like but I need to be happy. Like, why is that? Why is that such a thing? Why is that not allowed? Why can't doctors be happy? Why is every other profession allowed to think about? You know what makes them joyful, but doctors have to be miserable and just keep doing for others and forget about themselves. It's not fair, and I guess that's where my only child syndrome comes in.

Dr. Shah-Haque:

I'm an only child as well and I think it's amazing that you can say that, because there's that generational difference. However, we also have the stereotypical alcoholic doc in the corner. Not to demonize anything, I'm not joking, but there's a reason why we have stereotypes and coming into our humanity, and I love the fact that you're saying professional nirvana, because that's a great phrase and really highlights what we're trying to achieve. So thank you for highlighting that.

Dr. Kaur:

Yeah, absolutely so. When I couldn't find professional nirvana, I decided to build it, and so I'm a year and a half into building it and it's got its ups and downs. As most physicians now, going out into DPC is not easy. It's a financial risk, it's a professional risk, but I'm not averse to risk. As I have mentioned here, I am and I'm much happier. Yes, I'm much much happier.

Dr. Shah-Haque:

What about DPC? Makes you happy?

Dr. Kaur:

I can actually give care in the amount and to the degree which care is needed and be fulfilled, that I did my best, that I'm doing what I was put here on earth to do, because I didn't have to rush Mrs Smith Random example I didn't have to just rush her out the room because I have 10 minutes to see her and then I have to see another patient. I thought I had a conversation with her, I got to know her, because as a primary, you need to build that relationship. We're not surgeons who are just taking out stitches and we can move on to the next patient in five minutes, I to the next patient in five minutes. I build that relationship with my patients. They trust me and it's just. It's how it should be in primary care.

Dr. Kaur:

It shouldn't be this fresh crap that we're all used to now, unfortunately, and I think that makes me happy because I see how much better my patients feel and I see how happy it makes them to just have someone to listen to. And I don't solve all their problems. I don't. Dpc is not a magic wand that all of a sudden we heal people. No, it's just you're there for them and I think that's important.

Dr. Shah-Haque:

Yeah, you hit the nail on the head. There is something therapeutic at the soul level, I think about the primary care doc with the patient, and that can't be rushed Doesn't mean that every session is going to be an hour or two hours, but there are conversations that they're going to have with us that they may not have with anybody else.

Dr. Kaur:

Absolutely, absolutely. And it's unfortunate because a lot of patients nowadays don't know that's possible. They feel like it's more transactional, a primary care relationship. So they don't even expect that I sit there and I talk to them. You know I'm asking them what's your diet like? What's your? Do you exercise? How's sleep? Have you been sleeping lately, by the way? How's your mental health? Are you stressed? How do you handle that stress? Who do you lean on? When I ask them these questions, they're like what? Yeah, because that's your health.

Dr. Shah-Haque:

It's whole body health. I could tell students and residents you're treating people with a disease, you're not treating just a disease. You have to see where they're at. Where they're at, where are they on that spectrum? What are they willing to do, regardless of whether it's a standard of care or not? If they don't want to do it, we're here for advice but we got to honor their autonomy.

Dr. Kaur:

Yeah, yeah, and that's the first thing I tell all my new patients I'm here to guide and to educate you with standard of care, guidelines, research, whatever. What you want to do is it's your body. At the end of the day, it's your health, not mine, and I invested in it. But I how long did it take you to shift from trad role?

Dr. Shah-Haque:

employed to direct primary care.

Dr. Kaur:

Logistically, I left my corporate job in the summer of 23 and I opened KCOR MD, my practice, in January of 24. So, logistically, it took me six months. Mentally, it took me about four years. One, to recognize that what I want, what you want, is always what do you want. You have to because that's going to frame everything else to figure out what it is that I want. What is my professional Nirvana? And two, how do I get there and what do I need to do to get there? Being number three and then number four even though I put it at number four, this probably should be number one Mustering up the courage to do it.

Dr. Kaur:

It is scary. It is scary. Af, especially pure DPC Banks, will not give you loans because you're not contracted with insurance. So they don't want to take on that risk, at least at the time that I was looking for it here in South Florida. And these are banks that my family has had business relationships with for 30 plus years.

Dr. Kaur:

So I didn't just walk into some unknown. I couldn't get along. It was a huge financial risk. My 401k is pretty much drained at this point. My IRA is pretty much drained at this point. But again, it's a seesaw right Happiness versus.

Dr. Kaur:

Do I want to go back to a cushy guaranteed paycheck and be miserable for the rest of my life? Do I want to be happy and maybe not be out at a five-star restaurant every week at the level you got to make those concessions? But you have to have the courage to do it and it's an emotional risk Even if you have all the money in the world. You need to have the right people around you, because if it wasn't for my husband and wasn't for my mom and my friends, I would have quit 10 times over.

Dr. Kaur:

Not going to lie, it's not easy. It's not easy at all. You need to have a good support system. But during this whole time, as hard as it has been and as emotionally draining as it has been at times, my mental health has been perfect. I have not had. There's no anxiety. I don't have feelings of hopelessness or sad or feeling like what am I doing. It's still been a fantastic ride and fulfilling overall. So I know it's scary for a lot of physicians to think that they can go this route and whether or not they should. But man, if I could just encourage everybody to just go for it at least primary care physician.

Dr. Shah-Haque:

Thank you for that and yeah, it's a risk, but what side of the sword do you want to fall on? Do you want to, like you said, be miserable? Life is short. I don't want to spend whatever time I'm working. I'm somebody that likes to do something all the time, always have my hand in something. Yeah, you know, work into my 70s or 80s in some aspect or another. God willing, I don't want to be miserable. I'm not going to do that. Yeah. So to the listeners, if direct primary care or direct patient care is not your cup of tea, what she is saying is find out what your professional nirvana is. It's going to take some time. Take those four steps that she outlined and apply it to your own life, and I'm going to highlight it took you four years to make that decision and then six months to get the logistics. These are answers that come over time, but we have to be asking the questions and it's going to be immediate.

Dr. Kaur:

Yeah, it's not. I tell myself all the time. I should have been here five years ago. I should have been here right out of residency. I should have done this right away. And you can't. It's a journey and, as cheesy as that may sound, there are things you need to learn, not just about health care in America and how it works, because that's very important. You need to learn about yourself, because you might come out of residency and say, ok, I'm going to go into direct primary care because that's the better way to do things. How do you know it's the better way to do things? Because you might be somebody and there are doctors out there. You might be somebody who's perfectly happy in a corporate setting and that's your cup of tea. Then that's fine. We demonize corporate medicine so much, but there are physicians that prefer it that way, so we need to respect that as well. But you need to give yourself the opportunity to figure it out.

Dr. Shah-Haque:

I really appreciate what you've said right there. It is a journey and I think that we get so far down the rabbit hole. You're supposed to go to medical school residency and then join the working force and retire from the same place or open your own practice, and who cares about quit, getting upset or thwarted because the reimbursement rate is going down? Went from here to here, but the other side is it's where you haven't seen more volume or do something in order and it's not sustainable. But life is the biggest lesson and I think that we forget in our training that we have to rediscover parts of ourselves in order to make the next transition or to answer some of these questions, and that can be very uncomfortable because then you start to doubt yourself and you start to doubt everything that you've done thus far.

Dr. Kaur:

And it's hard. It's hard to have that introspection and almost not put yourself at fault or blame yourself, but, in a negative aspect, think about I chose to do this and I thought this was the right thing to do, but this has been completely the wrong thing to do. And now I feel bad. I shouldn't have made that decision. I made the wrong decision and it's and it's hard to look yourself in the mirror and tell yourself that maybe you were wrong. But also look at it as, hey, this was a learning experience. I needed to learn this because if I didn't, if I didn't do Cleveland Clinic and all these other things that I've done, I wouldn't have known what is the right thing for me. So, yeah, don't expect to have the answers all laid out for you. Sometimes you have to go through the tumultuous journey to get to them.

Dr. Shah-Haque:

But for you to be able to sit here and say that that shows a lot of introspective that you've had. So congrats on that. Not everybody has that this early in the game. Still, 10 years out of residency is still pretty early in the game for careers like medicine.

Dr. Kaur:

Yeah, thank you. High five to you, thank you.

Dr. Shah-Haque:

What do you think has been your stepping stones to be able to have that?

Dr. Kaur:

I don't know, honestly. I think about it a lot, to be honest with you why? Where did I get the courage from? Where did I get the wherewithal from to know to ask myself these questions? And I honestly have no idea.

Dr. Kaur:

If I really had to, I think I would say I was raised to be very go-getter-ish and to be well-rounded, try not to be a one-trick pony, try to have book smarts, common sense, look at things from different perspectives and, most of all, I was raised to believe that I could do anything that I wanted to do.

Dr. Kaur:

I know a lot of parents say this to their kids and sometimes people find it cheesy, but it's true. If you have the support system and the self-belief, you can literally do whatever it is that you want to do, as long as it's legal and good. And I think honestly, after my dad passing, I was forced to have some introspection there. I had to if I wanted to continue living and living a productive life doing whatever it was that I wanted to do. I had to sit there and think about these things and I was fortunate enough to have a very supportive mom, a very strong mom, a very strong role model female role model in my life and then along the way, a wonderful friend and a husband who's been great. I don't want to call them stepping stones, because that makes it sound like something that you step on in order to get where you need to get. They were more like my hands that pulled me up along the way. I think that's a great analogy.

Dr. Shah-Haque:

Amen to that. When you see her mom next time, give her a big hug for me because that's so impactful. I think we forget how yeah, not just the tribe that we build within our profession, but those that literally helped us walk and do all the small things. They're really our biggest cheerleaders. Sounds like you? Had awesome parents.

Dr. Kaur:

I couldn't be more grateful. I do have a very strong faith and I thank God every day that I had the parents that I had slash have.

Dr. Shah-Haque:

Yeah To the listeners out there who might be doubting their choice to stay in medicine or what's next, because sometimes we get into the almost mid-career phase and it's wow, this is really stagnant. Or I thought that it would be more mentally challenging, but now it's just mundane run of the mill. Do you have any advice for anybody in that particular situation?

Dr. Kaur:

I want to say just go for it. And it's easy for me to say, sitting here, because I went for it, but it wasn't easy to go for it. So I don't want anybody to hear that and take it lightly and be like, oh, it's easy for her to say the reason I say that is not because go for it, you're going to make lots of money in DPC and you're going to be happier in this. No, I'm saying go for it because if medicine is truly your calling, truly and you didn't do this because your parents forced you to do it, or because you know you, because your parents forced you to do it, or because you wanted a noble profession, if it's truly in your heart of hearts your calling to serve other people and to be a scientist and to want to be in that space, then I implore you to go for it, to do it because you are so needed. You as a physician, as a physician who truly sees this as a passion and a calling, are so needed because there are so many of us I don't want to say us, because I don't find myself in that group, but there's so many physicians that are. They're just jaded and I don't blame them for it, but they're jaded, they're not in love with the profession anymore, they're just. They're not happy and I feel like that's a disservice to their patients, that's a disservice to the communities that they're trying to serve.

Dr. Kaur:

If you truly want to continue a career in medicine, seeing patients in clinic, there is no better way to do it. For a primary care physician than DPC. Concierge is an option B which is absolutely viable as well. But I feel like if that's what's going to make you happy, go for it. And if you're a physician who is questioning their career in medicine and this is not bringing you joy, you're not happy to come to work because in the last 10 years, no matter what shit excuse my French has happened in my profession, in my organization, in my clinic, whatever I have never woken up not being grateful to go to work and not being excited to go to work and see my patients. If you are at a point where that's not happening, then take the opportunity to figure out what will make you happy and if you need to make a career change, then so be it.

Dr. Kaur:

Because, like you keep saying and it's very true you only live once. You only live once. Life is too short. These are not cheesy sayings. This is reality, and you cannot continue to be unhappy because it's not just you. More likely, it's impacting your family, it's impacting your people around you and there's no reason not to be happy. I don't know, there's really no other way to say it. One of the last conversations or the last conversation I had with my father, literally on his deathbed, was all I did was work, and I got to enjoy none of it and I didn't. He didn't get to do the thing that truly made him happy, because he thought that he had to fit this mold, and I think that's probably one of the matches that lights my fire day in and day out.

Dr. Shah-Haque:

That's absolutely beautiful. The more and more I get into life, it's like it needs to be, just not as chaotic as a two-year-old scribbling on the paper. But yeah, it's more of a flow and not just a straight road.

Dr. Kaur:

Yeah, and there are physicians that have left medicine and they're happy and that's fine. Nobody's going to blame you, nobody's going to. I'd rather have a happy spouse, happy friend than somebody who's miserable but thinks they're doing the right thing.

Dr. Shah-Haque:

I'm going to echo that because if you're living a life that's not true to you and you're doing it to fit somebody else's expectations, and go down that rabbit hole and to can lead you into a very dark place.

Dr. Kaur:

Yeah, yeah, and that's no, that's just unfortunate. We see it happen all day. I'm sure you see it in many of your colleagues where you are, and likewise.

Dr. Shah-Haque:

Yeah, and physicians are. We're all humans. We're all humans. We're not given, like, some type of special powers when we are donned with that white coat and during the white coat ceremony in medical school.

Dr. Kaur:

Contrary to many public perceptions, yes, and unfortunately, they're still out there.

Dr. Shah-Haque:

But through conversations like this, we're chipping away at that and reminding our colleagues and other listeners to embrace your humanity and it's okay to make change If you question yourself, if you doubt yourself. I think that's normal. That's being human. Also, reach out. Reach out now in the days of tell everything AI, there are tools out there and there are ways to network. Speaking of which, if the listeners wanted to reach out to you, what is the best way?

Dr. Kaur:

There's a couple. My Instagram is drdrkkaurmd and they can always email me as well, and my email is kkaurmd at kkaurmdcom. I know it's a little redundant, but, yes, I welcome anybody who wants to just talk or ask me how I did what I did. I'm not saying I'm super successful and I have all the answers for you, but I will be happy as hell to be a sounding board and offer my advice. Thank you for that.

Dr. Shah-Haque:

And just to frame that, you always want to discuss these things with somebody. That's a couple steps ahead. So if somebody's looking at doing what you have done, you're a few steps ahead. So it's always good for that sounding board and going back. If you have doubts, speak to somebody that has done it or has been in the same boat. But again, it's comparing apples to apples and you're a wealth of knowledge. You're very approachable and I've really enjoyed our conversation.

Dr. Kaur:

Likewise Thank you. This has been great because, like I said when we started, this isn't something that I've spoken about or been asked to speak about, so I really appreciate the opportunity. It's been a joy and a pleasure Likewise, thank you.

Dr. Shah-Haque:

What is one last pearl of wisdom we would leave with our listeners?

Dr. Kaur:

Trust yourself. Trust yourself and trust your instincts, your gut, whatever you want to call it when it comes to reaching your happiness, because it matters. You're important, you matter. You're not just a robot. Day in, day out, clock in, clock out, allow yourself the grace of faltering and of doubting yourself, all those things that you think you're not supposed to do. It's totally normal and you should be doing it.

Dr. Shah-Haque:

Thank you very much, and those emails and things will be in the show notes.