The Virtue of Curiosity in the Practice of Medicine

Part of a series

So, here are my top three virtues to cultivate, so far: ARTISTRY, described here; BREVITY, described here and now the “C” word, CURIOSITY.

In medicine, we need to be sleuths. We are looking for clues in the subjective history of a case, in sometimes seemingly random findings on exam or in our test results. And we are looking for distant factoids from our training or literature references on cases similar to the one in front of us. Even in seemingly straightforward cases, there could be red herrings, things that make our mind go in a logical direction, but are irrelevant, almost as if Mother Nature was trying to trick us.

If you do almost the same thing day in and day out, you risk becoming complacent. And if you run into things you don’t know, you might not have the energy to find out, especially on a busy clinic day and you may not have enough curiosity to look it up when things quiet down.

But curiosity that makes you dig a little deeper is often very energizing. It raises your dopamine just the way a mystery movie or a new adventure can do. The opportunities to expand your mind, learn something new and become energized are all around us.

Here is something I wrote in 2019, titled Curiosity, Antidote to Burnout.