Leadership Β· 5 min read
The Clinician Who Stays Curious: A Reflection on 30 Years at the Intersection of Surgery and Science
Thirty years in surgery, research, education, and innovation have taught me one thing above all others: the quality that most determines the impact of a clinical career is not intelligence, nor technical skill, nor even work ethic β though all matter. It is curiosity. The sustained, deliberate, professionally expressed curiosity that refuses to accept that current practice is optimal, that insists on asking why, and that builds the evidence and the tools that answer the question for the benefit of the next patient.
Curiosity in clinical medicine is not a personality trait that some surgeons are born with and others are not. It is a professional orientation β a habit of attention, a pattern of questioning, a discipline of following the interesting problem wherever it leads β that can be cultivated deliberately and that, once cultivated, transforms the nature of clinical practice from a set of procedures into an ongoing inquiry into what it is possible to offer patients.
What curiosity has produced in my career
Every significant contribution I have made to orthopaedic practice and research began with a clinical frustration β a patient whose outcome was not as good as it should have been, a decision that felt insufficiently evidenced, a gap between what existed and what was needed. OrthoGlobe began with the observation that global orthopaedic research was generating evidence in populations that did not represent the world's patients. CiteSort.ai began with the recognition that the evidence needed to answer clinical questions existed but was not accessible at the speed and completeness that clinical decisions required. The UNLOCK book began with the realisation that the principles of human flourishing in a complex, digital world deserved systematic examination through the lens of clinical and scientific thinking.
None of these began with a plan. Each began with a question that refused to go away. The discipline was in following the question with sufficient rigour and persistence to produce something that could serve others β not simply satisfying personal curiosity but transforming it into a contribution that outlasted the initial inquiry.
What I would tell a surgeon beginning their career
Stay close to your patients. Not simply in the clinical sense β though that is foundational β but in the sense of maintaining the direct encounter with human suffering and human resilience that is the most reliable source of the questions that matter most. The research agenda that emerges from genuine clinical observation is the one most likely to produce findings that change practice, because it is the one grounded in the experience of the patients whose care it is designed to improve.
Build your team before you need it. The collaborators, the mentors, the trainees, the digital partners, the patient advocates who will make your best work possible are not assembled quickly. They are found over years of honest engagement with the community of people who share your questions and your values. Invest in those relationships before you have a project that requires them.
The career that stays curious is the career that keeps improving β for the clinician who lives it, for the trainees who learn from it, and most importantly for the patients who benefit from its continuous evolution. Stay curious. It is the most important professional commitment you can make.
And finally: take care of yourself with the same seriousness and the same evidence-based rigour you apply to the care of your patients. The career that sustains excellence over decades is built on a foundation of health, relationship, and renewal that no amount of professional achievement can substitute. The patients you will see in 20 years deserve the version of you that arrives there whole.
π¬ What question is currently driving your clinical curiosity β the one that will not go away, that you find yourself returning to, and that feels like the next important contribution your career might make? I would genuinely like to hear it.