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.
I am quoting the whole piece here:
Curiosity, Antidote to Burnout
A patient with chronic pain who had tried CBD oil brightened up my ten hour workday on New Year’s Eve.
The cannabis derived product, free from the classic mind altering THC, has a sketchy record as a treatment for pain. But this woman described something that made me think, and Google for answers.
“It took away all that stinging, burning pain I have had everywhere, but it made me notice my hip and knee pains more”, she explained.
I instantly formulated my question: Does CBD affect signaling in the slow nerve fibers associated with the diffuse pain of fibromyalgia and opiate induced hyperalgesia, thereby making her more aware of the rapid transmission pain messages from her arthritic hips and knees?
“It’s as if your body was like an old fashioned radio and you adjusted the tuning so that the static decreased and now you can hear the actual broadcast more clearly…”, I said.
“Yes, exactly!” Her eyes lit up.
I thought for a moment.
“I would think that is a good thing, empowering, in that your arthritis pain makes more sense and may be more predictable than your fibromyalgia pain. This new state may make you more able to gauge how much you can do before you overdo it in terms of the arthritis.”
She agreed, and promised to keep me posted.
New Year’s Day I read an article on the BBC website that made me think again of my patient’s observation and how it fired up my curiosity. Titled “The secrets of the ‘high-potential’ personality”, it described curiosity as an antidote to burnout and one of several predictors of professional success that the authors claim to be better predictors than the Myers-Briggs Personality Types.
“Compared to our other mental traits, curiosity has been somewhat neglected by psychologists. Yet recent research shows that an inherent interest in new ideas brings many advantages to the workplace: it may mean that you are more creative and flexible in the procedures you use, help you to learn more easily, increases your overall job satisfaction and protects you from burnout.”
The six traits are:
Conscientiousness
Adjustment (ability to reframe stressful situations)
Ambiguity acceptance
Curiosity
Risk approach/Courage
Competitiveness
At the beginning of my day, my mind had been wandering back to New Year’s Eves away from the office, trudging through the snow in the Swedish countryside or dancing at Chateau Frontenac in Quebec.
As my workday ended, I wished my Suboxone group Happy New Year and thought about the literature search I wanted to do on my day off.
May I never lose my curiosity…
You always do such a wonderful job of showing the physician expertise that never makes it to the electronic medical record. So of course, is never included in those AI aggrandizements pretending that AI knows as much as a physician.