Learning

Szeto had some interesting discussions on eternity recently. (See http://ccszeto.blogspot.com/2011/02/eternal.html). As practising doctors, we need both learning skills and the desire to learn to keep up with the changing world. Without learning skills, the acquisition of knowledge is inefficient. Without the desire to learn, those skills are empty. Whenever young doctors or medical students say there is so much that they do not know, I reassure them medicine is after all for lifelong learning.

Some years ago, a postgraduate student asked his supervisor, “Professor, I really don’t know anything. What should I do?”

The professor answered, “When you think you know everything, they give you a bachelor degree. After you have learned that you don’t know anything, they give you a master degree. If you realize that not only do you not know anything but others are not better off, it is time you get your PhD.”

As such, we should not worry when so many final year students say they are not ready to be doctors. They have progressed to the stage of that postgraduate student and should join our master program. (http://www.idd.med.cuhk.edu.hk/msc-in-gastroenterology.html)

Conflict of interest statement: None declared.