Why I Still Read and Learn After Decades in Practice
There's a particular moment early in a medical career when you feel, for the first time, like you actually know what you're doing. It's a good feeling, and it's also a dangerous one if you let it settle in permanently. Lifelong learning medicine demands isn't a slogan for me it's the difference between a career that stays sharp and one that quietly calcifies.
Why Medicine Never Stops Teaching
I trained in an era when certain surgical approaches, certain diagnostic tools, and certain standard treatments were simply the accepted way of doing things. A meaningful number of those defaults have since been revised, replaced, or abandoned entirely, based on evidence that didn't exist when I was learning them the first time.
That's not a criticism of my training it's just the nature of the field. Medicine is built on an evolving evidence base, not a fixed body of knowledge you master once and then apply forever. Staying current medicine requires isn't optional maintenance; it's the actual substance of practicing well over a long career, not just at the start of one.
How I Stay Current
Over the years, a fairly consistent set of habits has kept me from falling behind, even as the pace of change in medicine has, if anything, accelerated:
Regular journal reading, not just skimming abstracts, but actually working through the methodology of studies relevant to my field, since the details often matter as much as the headline conclusion
Conference attendance, which I've come to value less for the formal sessions and more for the informal conversations with colleagues who are seeing different patterns in their own practices
Continuing education requirements, which I try to treat as a genuine opportunity rather than a box to check, even though the temptation to do the latter is real for any busy clinician
Case discussions with colleagues, particularly junior colleagues and residents, who often ask questions that reveal gaps in my own thinking that years of routine had quietly let slide
Deliberately seeking out disagreement. I make a point of reading perspectives that challenge my existing approach, not just ones that confirm it, because that's usually where the genuinely useful updates to my thinking come from
Continuing education as a formal requirement is the floor, not the ceiling, of what actually keeps a physician current.
The Risk of Standing Still
I've seen colleagues, over the years, settle into a version of practice that stopped updating somewhere along the way not through negligence, but through the ordinary gravitational pull of a busy schedule and the comfort of familiar routines. A few things happen when that occurs:
Outdated approaches persist longer than they should, sometimes well past the point where better evidence-based alternatives exist
Blind spots calcify. Without active exposure to new information, a physician's sense of "the standard approach" freezes at whatever point their active learning stopped
Patients receive care calibrated to an earlier era of medicine, even when the physician's technical skill remains excellent
Curiosity itself erodes, which is perhaps the quieter, harder-to-notice cost the loss of the habit of asking "is this still the best approach" rather than simply repeating what's always worked
None of this happens through a single decision. It happens gradually, through the accumulation of skipped journal articles and declined conference invitations, which is exactly why it requires deliberate counter-effort rather than good intentions alone.
Curiosity as a Habit
Medical curiosity isn't something I think of as a personality trait some physicians happen to have and others don't I think of it as a habit that has to be actively maintained, the same way a physical skill would atrophy without practice.
I ask "why" more than I used to, even about approaches I've used successfully for years, rather than assuming success means the reasoning behind them is still sound
I treat being wrong as useful information, not a threat. Updating my approach based on new evidence has never felt like an admission of past failure it's simply what practicing well over time actually requires
I stay curious about fields adjacent to my own, not just my specific specialty, because some of the most useful updates to my thinking have come from areas of medicine I don't directly practice
I've learned to enjoy not knowing something, at least in the sense that an unanswered question is an invitation to learn, rather than a gap to feel uncomfortable about
Advice to Younger Doctors
If I could pass along one thing to physicians earlier in their careers, it would be this: the habits you build now, for staying current, will matter more with each passing decade, not less. A few specific suggestions:
Build your learning habits before you're too busy to build them. It's much easier to maintain a habit than to start one from scratch after years of letting it lapse
Find colleagues who will challenge your thinking, not just ones who validate it — that relationship is one of the most reliable ways to stay sharp over a long career
Treat continuing education requirements as a floor, not a target. The physicians who stay genuinely current are usually doing meaningfully more than the minimum
Stay curious beyond your specialty. Some of my most useful clinical insights over the years have come from reading and conversations well outside my specific field
Expect to be wrong sometimes, and build the habit of updating gracefully when you are. That flexibility, more than any specific fact you learn early on, is what will keep your practice relevant decades from now
Medicine has never stopped teaching me, even after decades of practice. The moment I decide I've learned enough is probably the moment I should start worrying.
Dr. Raj is a surgeon and department chairman at the New York Institute of Otolaryngology, where he treats patients throughout Brooklyn and Rego Park across the full range of ear, nose, and throat care. Alongside his clinical practice, he leads community health initiatives and screening events across the borough, drawing on the same commitment to accessible, patient-centered care that shapes his approach in the operating room and the exam room alike. He writes occasionally about the practice of medicine — the clinical, the personal, and the lessons that don't fit neatly into either category.
