Curiosity – did it ever really kill the cat?

Living in a creative communications environment means that I’m surrounded by curious people. Curiously different. Curiously passionate. Curiously creative. And sometimes just outright...weird. That’s the beauty
of our industry – bringing together people from all backgrounds, all walks of life; coming together to make something beautiful in the world of healthcare.

What about the other meaning of curious – are we inquisitive enough? Do we go exploring? Are we curious about the disease areas and the impact they have on patients and their families? Do we push boundaries when others say no? In all honesty, can we really say we are curious enough?

So, to the main question: how do healthcare communications need to adapt?

Studies have demonstrated that when doctors are genuinely curious about their patients and what’s going on in their lives beyond the presenting disease, there is a significant positive impact on the shared decision- making and overall increased treatment effectiveness. That’s huge. By asking a few new questions, and taking a few extra minutes to find out about the person beyond the patient, overall patient outcomes are better.

Let’s apply that thinking to our world. Three simple principles to make us that little bit more inquisitive:

1. Create a culture of curiosity: Ask different types of questions: ‘why?’, ‘what else could be going on?’, ‘what about if we...’. From here build a world where experimentation (and any failure) is perfectly ok.

2. Let’s learn, and learn together: Evidence shows that collaborative learning leads to better outputs and longer-term sustained knowledge retention. Let’s bring together multi-stakeholder teams in environments that tackle real business challenges in a new and different way.

3. Redefine expectations: If we are to really change, expectations need to change. If an
idea is put on the table that hasn’t been driven by a unique insight, then it’s bounced. If we haven’t been curious enough about that story of human endeavour behind what you see on the surface, then it’s back to the drawing board.

And if we can do those things, that’s where we start actually solving real patient problems. Curious?