• Robert Sternszus, Alenoush Saroyan, and Yvonne Steinert.
• a Department of Pediatrics and Centre for Medical Education , McGill University , Montreal , Quebec , Canada.
• Med Teach. 2017 Apr 1; 39 (4): 377-382.

BackgroundIntellectual curiosity can be defined as a desire for knowledge that leads to exploratory behavior and consists of an inherent and stable trait (i.e. trait curiosity) and a variable context-dependent state (i.e. state curiosity). Although intellectual curiosity has been considered an important aspect of medical education and practice, its relationship to medical education has not been empirically investigated. The purpose of this exploratory study was to describe medical students' intellectual curiosity across a four-year undergraduate program.MethodsWe employed a cross-sectional design in which medical students, across a four-year undergraduate program at McGill University, completed the Melbourne Curiosity Inventory as a measure of their state and trait intellectual curiosity. A Mixed Models ANOVA was used to compare students across year of training.ResultsFour hundred and two out of 751 students completed the inventory (53.5%). Trait curiosity was significantly higher than state curiosity (M = 64.5, SD = 8.5 versus M = 58.5, SD = 11.6) overall, and within each year of training.ConclusionsThis study is the first to describe state and trait intellectual curiosity in undergraduate medical education. Findings suggest that medical students' state curiosity may not be optimally supported and highlight avenues for further research.

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