[Comment] The Wakley Prize 2026: learning experience

“In medicine, needless to say, the moment you feel as if you've mastered something is invariably the point at which your next experience will knock you straight back down to earth.”1 Physician and writer Rachel Clarke's words will ring true, painfully so, with anyone in practice, but especially early-career clinicians. Doctors emerge proudly from final examinations and assessments, brains overflowing with facts and figures, only to realise that the real process of learning has only just begun. For this year's Wakley Prize, we're interested in the early years of a health professional's career.