By “Why are you still studying? Were the years of medical school and training not enough?”
Barely an hour before writing this post, a neighbor knocked on my door asking if I could check his 9-month-old nephew.
The child was weak, had intermittent fever for a week, and had been vomiting since morning.
“Your nephew is dehydrated,” I said. “Bring him to the nearest hospital now.”
I could not remember the last time I managed pediatric acute gastroenteritis.
As an orthopedic surgeon, I rarely deal with these cases unless a family member develops the condition. Even then, managing pediatric AGE is not something I routinely do.
This is one reason healthcare professionals need to continue learning even after medical school and training.
You never know what disease or which patient will come knocking on your door.
Many of us also lose familiarity with clinical skills we have not used for some time. Society expects us to remain competent practitioners regardless of the specialized fields we eventually choose.
My neighbor, for example, trusted that I could help even though he had known for years that I was an orthopedic surgeon.
Learning also benefits us and our patients within our own areas of practice.
Medicine continuously changes. New research, evolving diseases, healthcare issues, and changing clinical approaches favor professionals who continue updating their knowledge and skills.
Learning is part of the responsibility we accepted when we entered this profession.
Simply put, we continue to learn for our patients.
What inspires you to learn?
We learn for our patients, but we are also the learners.
Society expects healthcare professionals to be lifelong learners — continuously improving and remaining competent in our fields.
In practice, our learning environment changes after formal training.
Learning no longer happens only inside classrooms, conferences, or hospitals. It becomes informal, self-directed, online, face-to-face, or a combination of these approaches.
Different environments require different learning strategies.
Most of us cannot simply leave clinical practice and return to formal schooling every time we need new knowledge.
We have to find ways of learning that fit our current professional and practice context.
What is your strategy for learning?
Technology has also changed how healthcare professionals learn.
Online tools allow us to access information, connect with other professionals, and continue learning without leaving our practice.
With appropriate technologies, we can choose when, where, and how we learn.
Feedly, for example, allows me to aggregate, curate, and organize medical information more efficiently.
These technologies are simply tools. We still decide how we use them to support our own learning.
What technologies do you use for learning?
As healthcare professionals, patients remain one of our strongest reasons to continue learning.
But as learning expands beyond formal training, we need to examine how we learn, what strategies work for us, and which technologies help us improve.
The goal is to take a more active role in directing our own learning.
In this November 10, 2018 #HealthXPh chat, we will explore the strategies and technologies healthcare professionals use for learning today.
By strategy, I mean the approach or method that guides how we learn.
By technology, I mean any tool — traditional or emerging — that helps support that learning process.
Last modified: July 9, 2026
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