Table 3.

Exemplary quotes from the participants for each theme.

Category	Theme	Exemplary quote with the participant number in brackets
(I) Curiosity’s role in the development of professionalism and patient care in clinical medicine	Curiosity leads to more engagement with medical knowledge and patients	‘So, without this drive to learn (…) I don’t think you would develop further and would not be able to master certain situations’. (#10)
		‘Anyone who suffers is better off if they can talk about their suffering and someone listens to them. If the listener isn’t curious, this will certainly be noticeable to the (…) patient through body language and what he’s saying and will be less curative. I think everyone who communicates is happy when the other side (…) is curious and inquisitive’. (#7)
		‘I think, in a broader sense, curiosity is of course also an important characteristic of a physician, especially for the scientifically active physician, who naturally wants to find out how diseases arise, why they arise, how and why to treat them, how this works, how it works better, how to optimize medical learning and action. But I don’t think that’s limited to the academically active physician, everyone needs it’. (#9)
	Curiosity is beneficial in (unusual) clinical patient cases	‘(…) you could have stopped earlier and sent the patient home simply with antibiotics, but, yes, if we hadn’t had this curiosity to continue investigating together with the senior physician on the ward, then it probably would have fallen short, yes’. (#10)
		‘If someone shows up for example with a skin rash, that doesn’t itch - I don’t know what it is. (…) then of course it’s important that you are curious (…): What does the efflorescence look like? That you look at the whole body (…), that you take a look into the throat, are there any indications, for example, for a former tonsillitis? (…) thus, you arrive at a working hypothesis and conclude, ‘ok, that could be a streptococcus (…) induced skin rash’ (#5)
(II) Doctor’s personal experiences with and cultivation of curiosity and impact on well-being	Curiosity evolves through the course of one’s career	‘I would actually claim, at least for my part, that curiosity really does become more specific, that it develops in niches that simply interest you, and that this general curiosity - which you need in the beginning because otherwise you won’t really make it as a doctor - is decreasing, honestly’. (#6)
		‘I believe that that [curiosity] is changing especially now in the context of working as a doctor, yes. More towards the negative (…) I think, in the long run, you acquire blinders (…)’. (#3)
		‘Clinically, I have discovered a few focal points for myself over the years, where my curiosity has increased disproportionately in these areas in which I already know my way around very well. Because, if you have already worked a lot on it, every news is infinitely exciting - so that I would say that overall curiosity has increased slightly’. (#7)
	Working conditions mostly inhibit personal curiosity	‘(…) It’s not untypical to say. ‘Ok, regarding the economy of time, I don’t have time for that. I’m turfing that to the specialty where I think it belongs, e.g. dermatology’. And that’s actually the direction the system is pushing towards. That means that the curiosity you have isn’t necessarily rewarded by the medical system you’re in, (…) but on the contrary, you lose time if you get too involved with things that are outside the scope of your narrow specialty’. (#5)
	The attitudes of the doctors matter	‘And accordingly, perhaps a person who is curious is also at the same time a person who attaches value to things, and perhaps this is (…) bitterly necessary in your life as a doctor: that you attach value to things’. (#5)
	Fulfillment of curiosity elicits positive emotions, inhibition of curiosity negative emotions	‘This also has to do with the fact that it’s fun when it makes you curious (…) I think it’s simply linked to doing a better job’. (#1)
		‘Curiosity is also exhausting, curiosity means that I want to understand something, that I am interested in something, somehow looking for resources that inform me, contacting people, searching the internet, et cetera. That means, if I am curious and looking things up, my working day will be longer’. (#6)
		‘In everyday professional life, I find it unsatisfactory if you don’t have time to read and study and to better understand things that interest you’. (#7)
		‘Well, degeneration, right. I remember my time in orthopedics, I did my practical year there, right. It was a real catastrophe (…) I think that makes you depressed in the end (…). And, it also leads to the fact that one simply thinks (…) more shallowly, that one (…) becomes jaded’. (#4)
	The relationship between burnout and curiosity is complex	‘I do think that (…) curious doctors tend to burn out less (…) that [curiosity] is just like a little reward (…). I believe that curiosity (…) creates its own very intrinsic motivation, (…) and I believe that it protects you’. (#4)
		‘I think burnout is always (…) a problem that arises when expectation and reality do not match. If you’re actually extremely curious, but never manage to pursue things and have no (…) means and no time for it, I can imagine that it promotes burnout (…) if you are stuck in a professional treadmill, that you’d rather like to get out of and do other things’. (#9)
		‘At some point you have no strength left for your curiosity and you aren’t able to pursue it anymore’. (#12)
		‘I’d rather adduce an example (…): the flame. You can either burn an entire forest with it or you can put it in an oven and thereby warm a house and cook with it. Thus, that’s a very essential question: ‘how do I handle this energy?’ So, it can be both’. (#5)
(III) Curiosity’s significance in medical education from the learner’s and teacher’s perspective	Physicians lament a lack of curiosity in students	‘In that [curiosity] regard people [students] are really very different. (…) it’s more like an attitude, like a good soldier who can overcome a situation that he doesn’t really like. But I don’t think that’s where the living art of our field begins’. (#5)
	Curiosity in medical students and physicians can be nurtured with the right methods and in the right conditions	‘(…) interactive formats such as pbl [problem-based learning], where things are worked out together, where, in a dynamic process, you can observe how curiosity increases. Every patient contact for someone (…) in medical education can increase curiosity. And today’s possibilities for tapping into pubmed’s infinite resources of knowledge’. (#7)
		‘The fact that almost everyone comes in contact with research at some point during their education (…) is definitely something that encourages to dive in deeper’. (#11)
		‘I would create time and space for casuistry. Where it is absolutely clear that what the doctor experiences and sees can be discussed in a medical group, or at least with experienced doctors, so that curiosity is really satisfied’. (#5)