Learning from the early careers of master clinicians

BACKGROUND: Master clinicians are recognized as multidimensional experts in clinical medicine. Studying their formative clinical activities could generate insights to guide medical trainees and early career clinicians. OBJECTIVES: To investigate which early career activities were adopted more commonly by master clinicians than their matched peers and to characterize master clinicians' early career activities across institutions and specialties. SUBJECTS AND METHODS: We surveyed master clinicians at seven medical centres about their early career activities. For master clinicians in the Department of Medicine (DOM), we also surveyed matched internist peers. RESULTS: Of 150 master clinician respondents, 65% were internists (DOM); 35% practiced in other specialties. Compared to their internist peers, there was a trend toward internist master clinicians reading more about their patients' conditions (6.0 vs. 4.8 h per week), reading more case reports (4.0 vs. 2.1 per month), engaging in more frequent teaching duties and devoting less time to research. CONCLUSIONS: The early career activities identified in this study can be adopted by clinicians pursuing clinical excellence and promoted by training programs that seek to foster life-long learning.