About Dr. Nick Karr, Founder of Citra Urgent Care
Some of my earliest childhood memories are of the times I spent “tinkering,” taking apart old alarm clocks and TV’s, etc., trying to understand how things worked. Along with a need to explore, came a passion for science, which is why from a young age I was encouraged to pursue a career in medicine. The decision to become a physician was solidified for me when at the age of 12, my mother was diagnosed with kidney failure, and began undergoing dialysis treatment. Rather than hiding from this life altering event, I faced it head on, ultimately learning to connect her to her dialysis machine.
The summer before starting 8th grade, my mother spent a prolonged period in the hospital after her first kidney transplant failed. During this period, I had the opportunity to spend months at her bedside. It was then that I learned both to feel comfortable in a medical setting, while also gaining an appreciation for what the patient and their family experiences, enlightening me on the importance of patient care.
I continued a course towards a career in medicine, and after graduating from the University of Michigan, attended medical school at Wayne State University in Detroit, Michigan. This experience afforded me the opportunity to learn from a patient population diverse in both their socioeconomic and cultural background, as well as in the types of diseases confronted. Continuing my training in Detroit, I completed a residency in Emergency Medicine at St. Johns Hospital, where I continued to benefit from a diverse patient and disease population. While this period was formative in the medical knowledge I gained, at the same time, my childhood curiosity into understanding how things function led me to continue questioning the flaws I perceived in the healthcare delivery process, envisioning new, more efficient ways to confront the problems I observed.
Upon graduation, I moved to Dallas Texas, where I worked in several DFW Emergency Departments. During this time, it occurred to me that a huge portion of the patients seen in the ER, did not in fact need to be seen in an ER. What’s more, I began to see how the current ER and Freestanding ER model was fundamentally broken, in that it often sought to maximize financial objectives over patient care and medical outcomes. It also was quite clear to me that the challenges of both the difficulty in accessing healthcare, as well as poor quality of customer service provided in the other established urgent care centers, afforded the opportunity to offer an alternative. A healthcare experience focused on exceeding our customer’s expectations of quality, convenience, and service. It’s this focus on the fundamentals of customer service, which has been instrumental in building Citra Urgent Care into the top rated urgent care in DFW.
