how to ask smart, professional questions
"While this post may seem rather serious and harsh, this is a very important skill as you become a professional, regardless of whether you ultimately decide to pursue medicine or not, but is especially true if you want to become physician. The world will judge you by the kind and quality of the questions you ask. Picking up some of these pointers will help you and me both.
1. Try to find an answer for your problem first.
Google has changed how we gather information. This applies to us even on the wards. If you have the luxury of time, do a little homework of your own on the web. It may not be 100% accurate but that’s totally fine. Don’t convey the impression that you’re just too unwilling to look up something and gain some background on a topic, and that you want the person you’re asking the question to that you want them to do your work for you. Even if you don’t get great results, saying “I googled on the following XYZ but didn't get anything that looked promising” is respectful. People can tell from your questions how much reading and thinking you did, and will be more willing to help if you come prepared. Asking questions after not doing your homework on the wards will sink you very fast in medicine.
In medicine, sometimes you'll get a response of "GID" from a snarky attending. Stands for "Google It Dumbass"
2. Write in clear, grammatical, correctly-spelled language
People who are careless and sloppy writers are usually perceived also as careless and sloppy at thinking. Answering questions for careless and sloppy thinkers is not rewarding; we'd rather spend our time elsewhere. So expressing your question clearly and well is important. If you can't be bothered to do that, we can't be bothered to answer your question. Obviously if we have a working relationship and we've communicated before, we can be more relaxed and friendly. But first impressions count, and can hurt you badly.
3. Be explicit about your question
Open-ended questions tend to be perceived as open-ended time sinks. Professionals who can give you the best answers are typically also the busiest people. You will likely get a useful response if you are explicit about what you want that person to answer. This will focus their effort and implicitly put an upper bound on the time and energy a respondent must allocate to helping you. This is good. To understand the world experts live in, think of expertise as an abundant resource and time to respond as a scarce one. The less of a time commitment you implicitly ask for, the more likely you are to get an answer from someone really good and really busy. So in short while open ended questions are fine for a board that everyone can post on like this one, open ended questions are typically inappropriate for personal messages or emails.
4. Courtesy never hurts, and sometimes helps
Be courteous. Use “Please” and “Thanks for your attention” or “Thanks for your consideration”. Make it clear you appreciate the time people spend helping you for free. Being an asshole to me or anyone you need help from, who is volunteering their very little free time through private messages is not going to help you.
Hopefully this post will be taken in good faith. These are good skills to acquire, and ones that I took awhile to learn myself. Please try to think of some of these points when communicating with me or any other professional for that matter, and you will go far.
See this if you're more interested:
http://faculty.gvc.edu/ssnyder/121/Goodquestions.html
-Love, Andy"