One of the most valuable pieces of advice I received from a mentor came when I was a medical student and was beginning to think about what I wanted my future clinical research to look like. He told me that when I started practice, I should plan to follow a few groups of patients with interesting or challenging pathologies and really learn from their outcomes—both the patients who did well and, perhaps more importantly, those who didn’t. His advice was simple: “Follow the patients, learn from the outcomes, and let your practice generate your research questions.”

His point was that good research questions often come from paying close attention to what you see in your own practice. Rather than waiting for a research idea to appear, he encouraged me to identify clinical patterns, systematically follow patients over time, understand why certain treatments succeed or fail, and then turn those observations into research questions.

For someone early in their career, I think that is one of the most important habits you can develop: let your clinical experience drive the questions you want to answer through research. You don’t need to start with a large database or a major study. Start by being curious, follow patients thoughtfully, learn from your successes and failures, and allow those observations to evolve into meaningful research questions.