Curiosity

Definitions

1. Curiosity: The desire to know or learn about something.
2. Studiositas: The proper direction and application of our desire to know.
3. Curiositas: A disordered desire for knowledge, such as gossip, vanity, or inquiry that distracts from a more important good.

What Is Curiosity?

Curiosity becomes a virtue when inquiry is guided by a worthwhile purpose and appropriate restraint. In medicine, it means approaching each patient with an interest in their particular story and a willingness to be surprised. Humility makes this possible: we seek understanding because we recognize what we do not yet know.

Why Should We Practice Curiosity?

• Understanding: Questions can reveal clinical details or personal concerns that assumptions leave hidden.
• Relationships: Interest in a patient's experience gives them room to speak and helps build respect.
• Compassion: Asking about another person's suffering is one way to show care.
• Learning: Curiosity keeps clinical work and study attentive, rather than merely routine.

How Do We Practice Curiosity?

1. Acknowledge uncertainty: Identify what you do not understand before settling on an explanation.
2. Ask open questions: Invite patients, families, colleagues, and teachers to tell you more.
3. Listen: Allow pauses and let the other person finish before moving to the next question.
4. Examine your motives: Direct inquiry toward understanding and care; resist gossip or the wish to display knowledge.
5. Keep a sense of wonder: Notice when care becomes mechanical and use reflection, conversation, or the humanities to renew attention.

Clinical Case

You are a palliative care physician. It is the early afternoon, and you are getting some of your clinical notes and family meeting notes completed from the morning. You get a page that reads, “Palliative care consult for GOC for a family that doesn’t ‘get it’”.

You call the resident back to get some context on the consult.

“Thanks so much for returning my page. This is for RK, a 23 year old man who has osteosarcoma and has now gone through multiple lines of therapy, coming in with worsening pain and found to have further progression of disease. We were talking to his parents at bedside yesterday, who, by the way, have been ‘difficult’, and had a conversation with them about making him DNR/DNI. And they responded by saying that they ‘believe in miracles’ and that they want to keep him full code. We were hoping you could help with conversations and goals of care for these parents who don’t really ‘get it’.

You reply, “Could you tell me a bit more about the specific conversation you had regarding code status and their belief in miracles?”

The resident replies, “Well, it’s clear that RK is dying and not responding to therapy. So, we had a real discussion with him and his parents about it and suggested hospice. In that context, we said that it would make sense to make him DNR/DNI. And that’s when they said they were religious and believed in miracles.”

You thank the resident for the context and go over to see the parents. As you enter the room, you see that the parents are sitting at bedside holding RK’s hand and talking softly to him. You introduce yourself as the palliative care specialist and what palliative care is. You notice that they stiffen up to this. So you decide to start off with just getting to know RK.

“Tell me a bit about RK,” you start off. After hearing a bit about his life, RK’s mom brings up that, “I believe in miracles, we’ll get through this.”

To this, you reply, “It sounds like you’ve experienced miracles before. Tell me about them.”

To which, the mother turns to you in a more excited way and tells a story about how they were told that the initial diagnosis was grave, that the osteosarcoma had already widely metastasized, and that he had been hospitalized with a grave PE soon after, and was intubated, and that they were told multiple times that RK was “not going to make it.” But he did, and he was able to live another year, responding at times to some therapies and not to others.

You respond, “It sounds like you’ve already experienced a lot of miracles.”

To which RK’s mom replies, “I know that this cancer isn’t going away. And I recognize this could be the end. But I also think that not at least giving him a trial of intubation for a possible reversible cause like when he had the pulmonary embolism, wouldn’t make sense.”

Sources: LearnWorlds outline; Canva one-pager, page 10.