Comments on: On medical pimping

By: Deep Jive Interests » Why I Love Blogging, Part #242: Hearing It From The Horse’s Mouth

Sat, 23 Feb 2008 17:21:54 +0000

[...] someone who has been on the receiving end of a great deal of pimping throughout my medical training, I know what its like to blank out when someone has asked you a [...]

By: Carey

Carey — Thu, 30 Oct 2003 12:10:07 +0000

As a medical school graduate and a current law student, I can tell you that pimping is common to both professions, and that both medical students and law students often react very strongly to it.

Why? Because there’s nothing the typical law or medical student relies on more for their self-esteem than “knowing the answer” and “being smart.”

Pimping (or “the Socratic method” as law students know it) will inevitably be humiliating so long as students aren’t comfortable with “not knowing the answer.”

By: Glorfindel of Gondolin

Glorfindel of Gondolin — Thu, 30 Oct 2003 12:03:44 +0000

“The Socratic Method” vs. “Pimping”
On Brian Leiter’s blog, there are some links to some good discussions of the “Socratic method” of law school teaching. All of which made me think of the pimping that goes on in medical school. Both techniques are controversial in…

By: Bill Reith

Bill Reith — Wed, 30 Jul 2003 14:49:59 +0000

An ROTC instructor once told me that when he was a C130 Hercules check pilot, this was a normal method of deflating arrogant students. He prided himself on the minutiae he’d acquired. One year, on his own check flight, he was asked: Captain, can you tell me the torque necessary to secure the nuts which hold on the windshield wipers on this aircraft? Well, he didn’t know, and scour the manuals as he would, he couldn’t find it. He would be dammed before admitting ignorance, though, so he called the Hercules assembly plant, working his way through the staff until he was talking to a guy who actually put the wipers on the plane. When he asked his question, the guy started to laugh. “Twenty years I’ve been doing this job, and no one has ever asked me that question — and now I get two in one week!”

By: Brian

Brian — Sun, 27 Jul 2003 01:06:44 +0000

I don’t think “pimping” is unique to medicine. What you described sounds like every group meeting I attended in Grad school (chemistry). It was occassionally irritating, but you learn a lot. Ultimately, it made job talks much less stressful – I didn’t have to worry about being interrupted there, at least. And I don’t think a friendlier (? not sure what the right word is here) atmosphere would have made anything better – the long hours, occassional bouts of self immolation and intense frustration would have been a pisser even absent “pimping.”

Brian