Medical Pimping

Pimping can be an awesome learning experience or a horribly humiliating experience.  There is a fine line between the two.

Pimping is when an upper level resident, attending, or other faculty member asks you questions about a topic, any topic.  These questions start out simple and basic and rapidly accelerate into the deep details of a very specific topic. It can be about anything. It can start anywhere and end anywhere. The purpose is two fold.  The first part is to teach the student or show where the student should focus his/her studies because of lack of knowledge.  Second, is to be Put In My Place.

Another, more gentle, name for it is the Socratic Method.

Example: When you admit a patient to the hospital, they have other medical issues and they become your responsibility.  So you need to know them even though not directly related to OMS.  So you present your patient to the attending, then they start firing away.  What is the most common type of mandibular fracture outside of the United States? What are surgical approaches you would use to gain access?  What are possible complications of different approaches? What is Frey Syndrome and how can you treat it? What is the DOC for pinworms?

Pimping is usually done at conference, case discussions and morning rounds on patients with all of the attendings and residents present.  This can be very stressful because you are singled out one at a time and you are on your own.  If done correctly, pimping can be constructive and reinforce what you know and even teach you.  This type of pimping is usually more gentle, constructive, and purposeful.  On the other end of the spectrum is the more traditional, surgical style of pimping.  It can be malicious.  If so, it is usually meant to humiliate and publically embarrass the student.  Some attending surgeons seem to do it for sport to show that they know a lot and some do it just to belittle another student.  I like to believe that the majority of attendings do it to teach.  Even if it comes across in a harsh manner.  The bad part about these pimp sessions is that eventually the attending will get to the edge of your knowledge and you will not know the answer.  This happens every time.  So you are exposed every time.  This can mess with someone's mind when they have been labeled the "bright and intelligent one" their entire life.

So through these pimping sessions I have been humbled to dirt.  I have had to learn to be ok with not knowing the right answer.  I have also learned to NOT say "I don't know" if I am not 100% sure of the answer.  I should give my best educated answer.  This will help me not look like a fool.  I want to impress others, but there is a huge difference between 1st year OMS residents and the Seniors/Chief residents and then there is another big jump to attending surgeons.  The learning curve is incredibly steep in every year of residency, part of it is due to the pimp sessions.  So it is a love/hate relationship with these sessions.

My goal is to gain a large base of knowledge while in my 1st year and build upon it.  I need to do more reading from the OMS textbooks and truly grasp it.  I need to attend the conferences and journal clubs.  I need to review head and neck anatomy.  I need to learn medicine.  I need to practice OMS procedures.  There is a lot to do.

As far as pimping goes, my long term goal is to be an attending surgeon and use pimping successfully as a teaching tool in a humanistic way.