The President's message is written personally by the President each month and all opinions expressed within are his/her individual opinions and do not necessarily reflect the opinions of the Academy, it’s affiliates, or it’s employees.
Curiosity. A critical feature of physicians – both curiosity in the science of our profession, but also curiosity in each of our patients and the communities in which they live. A recent theme of curiosity in various interactions in my professional life serves as a beautiful reminder of how much joy curiosity can bring.
A resident’s discomfort with the simplicity of a patient interaction served as a reminder not to stifle my own curiosity. While celebrating a simple visit would be easy to do, the resident was worried he was missing something.
His well-founded concern led us to dive deeply into hypotheses and testing them when we returned to the patient. Exploring more about the patient’s story, her motivations and her culture, the resident’s discomfort abated. That additional tincture of curiosity ultimately led to better patient care and joyful learning.
At the funeral of a dear patient, I learned that being inquisitive about her perspectives of her own care was likely what kept her coming back for regular visits – often declining usual care, she felt valued based on a presentation of curiosity, which allowed us to be a stronger patient-physician team.
In a multidisciplinary meeting striving for transformation of patient care, new questions by individuals from varied backgrounds and roles illustrated how critically important diverse perspectives are to making our work broadly relevant and effective. We must be maximally curious before and after we gather data, draw conclusions or implement further actions. It is our inquisitiveness that determines our future trajectory.
Curiosity is often what attracted us to medicine in the first place. One of my colleagues went into medicine because “I wanted to know what doctors knew” while others desired a career that would challenge them to learn continuously. Applicants for residency often describe wanting to truly get to know their patients through inquiry about their lives and what may motivate them. Curiosity inspired my recent description of a desire to go back to residency a week at a time to dive deeply into various aspects of medicine that have rapidly changed over the course of my career. How fun would it be to “rotate” with your favorite cardiologists, oncologists, endocrinologists or other specialists to “geek-out for a week” around specific areas of practice?!
It should be no wonder, then, that our continued curiosity can be what drives true joy in our careers. It is curiosity that uncovers the zebra diagnosis the patient-physician team has been longing to find. It is curiosity that builds relationships with our patients and individualizes our care for them. It is curiosity that drives transformational change in our practices and our communities. It is curiosity that drives scientific innovation and deep human connection. In many moments, it is curiosity that fuels our joy in Family Medicine.
While I may not be returning to one-week residency rotations imminently, I will be allowing my curiosity to bring me to the MCW-WAFP collaboration Winter Refresher Course March 6-7, where I am confident I will find joy in curiosity driving scientific innovation, learning and human connection. Will you consider letting your curiosity bring you there, too?
