The Arrival Fallacy and the DPC Physician

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Douglas Farrago’s recent article “Your DPC Practice is Filled. Hooray! But is that all there is?” rang more true for me than ever before.

I have been suffering from arrival fallacy my entire life. It started with let’s get into college, then let’s get into med school, then let’s finish med school, then residency during the pandemic has to end eventually. I even had a countdown timer app that I started during my second year.

Once I finally got out of the ivory tower of academia, I thought, “Great, now I can practice medicine and feel free.” Little did I know that my first job with a traditional fee-for-service practice would sell out from under me, and I would have to accept a corporate job only a few months after being hired. Getting PTSD from a major hospital system and its deficiencies, especially when it came to primary care pediatrics, infuriated me to learn as much as I could about healthcare. This drove me to open my own DPC. It felt like a return to how medicine should be practiced.

I felt that I had finally arrived. Three years later, I’m running my own clinic that is steadily growing, allowing me to be the pediatrician I always dreamed of being. But that sensation returned. Now what?

I’ve always set goals, met them, and then found a new goalpost a few miles further away. Now, having a young family of my own, my perspective has changed. Life had been short bursts of intense work for a reward, over and over again.

I went on with day-to-day life, seeing patients, spending time with family, enjoying flexible scheduling, and loving what I had built. And it dawned on me that I had stopped running by myself from goalpost to goalpost. I now had my own ship that I could sail wherever life takes me. That ship is best called Independence.

By doing DPC, I have a crew, I have flexibility, and most importantly, I finally feel that, as the saying goes, it’s about the journey, not the destination.

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About Daniel Dvoskin, DO

Dr. Dvoskin, known to most patients as “Dr. Daniel,” was born in Ukraine and immigrated to Brooklyn, New York, where he spent his early childhood. Fluent in English and Russian, he earned a Bachelor of Science in Biological Science from Florida International University and a Doctor of Medicine from William Carey University College of Osteopathic Medicine in Hattiesburg, Mississippi. Dr. Daniel launched his pediatric medicine career at Baylor Scott & White McLane Children’s, where he completed his residency in 2022. He worked with Texas Children's Hospital until he started his current direct pediatric primary care practice. He has a passion for forming relationships with patients and watching them grow alongside their families. When not seeing patients, Dr. Daniel enjoys spending family time with his family: his wife, an optometrist in Hutto, and their daughters. His other hobbies include creative writing and automotive sports. Community outreach is important to Dr. Daniel, and he looks forward to planting roots in the Taylor area.