The Virtue of Studiositas in Medical Education

Medical education, while a process of deep moral formation, lacks any account of how students and trainees are to morally approach the process of learning. The classical understanding of the vice curiositas and the virtue studiositas, as described by the theologian Paul Griffiths, provides a framework to help understand the better and worse ways that students and trainees can engage in the learning experience. While medical school may powerfully inculcate the vice of curiositas, such a posture to learning fails when one is faced with the novel challenges of clinical care. Given the challenges inherent to moral formation in medicine, students and trainees might find communities that catechize the virtue of studiositas outside of the boundaries of the medical school and hospital.