Takeaway
Travel fosters curiosity and open-mindedness. Encountering diverse cultures can encourage healthcare professionals to remember the value of asking better questions, avoiding assumptions, and appreciating the individuality of each patient.
Passion in the Medical Profession | August 13, 2025 | 2 min read
By Scott Wright, MD, Johns Hopkins Medicine
For many people, travel is their preferred hobby—if not their favorite thing to do. It’s a luxury to be able to travel; leaving your home and visiting another place may be costly.
For most who work in healthcare, patients come to see us in-person and we need to be accessible. Therefore, it’s challenging to take time off and travel to faraway places. Because healthcare professionals are needed in our practices and hospitals, we generally can’t work remotely or have extended periods away.
But oh, what a big, beautiful world it is with so much to see, do, and learn!
I’ve been lucky to travel a fair bit in the last year—for work and pleasure. Two of our three children were living on another continent providing a wonderful reason to get away. Whenever we’re out of the country, we try to do the following in every new city: walk extensively to see the town on foot, eat at some of the oldest restaurants where locals frequent, take in a sporting event (usually a soccer match), go to museums, and hear some live music.
I believe that travel that can help healthcare professionals become more compassionate, effective, and insightful caregivers. Here are seven tips or lessons that I’ve come to appreciate.
1. Embrace cultural humility.
Just as travel exposes you to diverse languages, beliefs, and customs, patient care also calls for openness to cultural differences. Assume you don’t know much about someone’s background—ask, listen, and adapt.
2. Be present and observant.
When traveling, you try to notice interesting details and remain alert to unfamiliar surroundings. Similarly, in clinical encounters, slowing down to truly observe and listen can reveal subtle clues that improve diagnosis and connection.
3. Adaptability is key.
Travel teaches you to deal with surprises—like delayed flights, wrong turns, and unexpected weather. In medicine, flexibility and staying calm under uncertainty is essential to care for patients in dynamic environments.
4. Communication goes beyond words.
When you don’t speak the local language, you learn to rely on gestures, tone, and empathy. Similarly, nonverbal communication, kindness, and patience can bridge gaps with patients who speak different languages or have low health literacy.
5. Appreciate different world views.
Seeing how other societies view important topics (including but not limited to health, aging, death, and wellness) can challenge assumptions. Such insights can help healthcare professionals to respect and better support patients with different values or expectations about treatment and healing.
6. People are more than their problems.
When traveling, you appreciate that people are so much greater than their circumstances—not just “a taxi driver” or “a hotel worker” but individuals with expertise, knowledge, and stories. Likewise, patients are of course so much more than their diagnoses; learning their life stories enhances personalized care and makes the work so much more meaningful.
7. Gratitude and perspective.
Travel—especially to areas with limited resources—fosters gratitude for what we have and affords broader perspectives about equity. This can strengthen a physician’s sense of purpose, advocacy, and humility.
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This piece expresses the views solely of the author. It does not represent the views of any organization, including Johns Hopkins Medicine.