Surgery Pimp Questions

[shishi]

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I'm on my surgery rotation right now, and honestly, I just want to pass and get what I can out of it. I usually get about 50-70% of the pimp questions they ask me right -- I've tried recall and I read up on my patients every day. I'm just having trouble keeping everything in my head on so little sleep. Can someone fail for not getting pimp questions right?

 

[Instatewaiter]

Probably not. Pimp questions are to teach you stuff. If you got them all right you wouldn't be learning anything.

 

[Smurfette]

No, if you don't know ANYTHING, that's a problem; answering some successfully is fine. Being able to answer about 50% of pimp questions is pretty respectable. Generally, the pimping gets harder if you are doing well---testing how far your knowledge goes, in a way. Some residents/attendings have certain pimp questions that segue into a mini-lecture they like to give to students.

 

[SB100]

[YOUTUBE]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uyw7yYNvI5o[/YOUTUBE]

 

[Meerkatology]

this is purely attending dependent. but generally 50% is pretty good as said above.

and anatomy pimpers in surgery can eat my shorts.

 

[pingouin]

this is purely attending dependent. but generally 50% is pretty good as said above.

and anatomy pimpers in surgery can eat my shorts.

then all of my attendings can do that for you. In 8 weeks, I'm not sure I got pimped about anything that WASN'T anatomy.

which brings up my only advice- I used recall, but I also started using my old M1 anatomy atlas to make sure I knew the surgical area as well as I could. that helped.

 

[psych]

Don't know why this is over here and not in the clinical rotations section but anyway...
I hate pimping passionately and vow to never subject a student to such interrogation to 'teach' them. Yesterday was my last day with an attending who I've worked with all month on countless surgeries. He has never pimped at all previously but apparently he decided he didn't like me anymore and let me have it during a hernia repair. Of course its totally my fault bc I did not study before scrubbing in. Haven't even looked at any hernia stuff in the past 4 weeks since I thought I was luckily placed at a site that isn't big on pimping. I honestly wasn't expecting to get my ass handed to me. I got asked more questions during one surgery than my entire month working with this group. Then I got to listen to the surgeon talk to other people about how awful a medical student I am for the rest of the day. Let's just say my ego was bruised and I didn't mutter much after that. I'm sure I did something to piss him off earlier this week bc before tues/wed he was pretty nice to me.
Ughhh I just felt like venting bc I'm having a hard time moving on from this. Its the last impression I left and I'm scared what my evaluation is going to say seeing how quotes are extracted unedited to write the deans letter. Very worried about that...
This is also to warn other people not to get too comfortable with any of your attendings bc today might me the day where they decided to test your anatomy knowledge on some random case so read up regardless.

 

[Smurfette]

Don't know why this is over here and not in the clinical rotations section but anyway...
I hate pimping passionately and vow to never subject a student to such interrogation to 'teach' them. Yesterday was my last day with an attending who I've worked with all month on countless surgeries. He has never pimped at all previously but apparently he decided he didn't like me anymore and let me have it during a hernia repair. Of course its totally my fault bc I did not study before scrubbing in. Haven't even looked at any hernia stuff in the past 4 weeks since I thought I was luckily placed at a site that isn't big on pimping. I honestly wasn't expecting to get my ass handed to me. I got asked more questions during one surgery than my entire month working with this group. Then I got to listen to the surgeon talk to other people about how awful a medical student I am for the rest of the day. Let's just say my ego was bruised and I didn't mutter much after that. I'm sure I did something to piss him off earlier this week bc before tues/wed he was pretty nice to me.
Ughhh I just felt like venting bc I'm having a hard time moving on from this. Its the last impression I left and I'm scared what my evaluation is going to say seeing how quotes are extracted unedited to write the deans letter. Very worried about that...
This is also to warn other people not to get too comfortable with any of your attendings bc today might me the day where they decided to test your anatomy knowledge on some random case so read up regardless.

Maybe he got your eval and realized he never asked you any questions to assess your knowledge....and clearly caught you unprepared and suspects you haven't made an effort to read about the patients during your whole rotation (which sounds like that is exactly what happened). Hopefully you will learn from this and not make the same mistake again. Odds are the the eval won't be as bad as you think as most people hold back in evals (the dean's letter factor---most choose their comments carefully).

 

[turkeyjerky]

Ok, one thing I don't get is how "read about your patients" equals "memorize anatomy pimping points for tomorrow's surgery"

Yeah I read about hernias during my surgery rotation; i read about sx, complications and indications to operate. I did not spend my time memorizing the borders of gesselbach's triangle or the layers of the abdominal wall (once I found out my attendings didn't pimp on that stuff--thank god or else they wouldv'e thought I was the worst student ever).

 

[MilkmanAl]

Ok, one thing I don't get is how "read about your patients" equals "memorize anatomy pimping points for tomorrow's surgery"

Good question. I'm also not quite sure why they're interested in assessing our knowledge before actually teaching us anything. Pimping is a very inefficient practice in the first place, but to do it without having run through the steps of a hernia surgery, to steal your example, is just wasting everyone's time as you fumble for answers. Go through that stuff step-by-step, and then come back to it on the next case if you're just burning to pimp your students for whatever reason.

 

[psych]

Hopefully you will learn from this and not make the same mistake again.

That's what meant by my last sentence. And I have been reading for my shelf but not studying anatomy. One of the questions he asked wasn't anywhere to be found in any of my books except my anatomy text.
I wouldn't be so upset about the situation but he turned malignant. Maybe I should have bolded the fact that he put me down to other people for the rest of the day.

 

[Cruzinman]

If you're scrubbing in on a hernia, make sure that you know the life history of Dr. Hesselbach, and not just the borders of his triangle.

 

[naus]

Surgery pimp questions are 90% anatomy. Know your anatomy and you can reason your way through most of them.

Hesselbach's triangle is basic stuff. It does make you look like a terrible medical student if you don't know this on a surgical rotation for a freaking hernia.

 

[Cruzinman]

I agree, knowing the anatomy is straightforward when you know the procedure in advance. However, one time I had to go in on a rupturued abdominal aortic aneurysm with a big laparotomy incision, and so the entire abdominal anatomy was fair game. After we patched the bleed and were closing, the surgery attending said that since we were on the aorta I should proceed to talk about the Organ of Zuckercandle, its derivation from the embryologic neural crest and its role in maintaining the fetal circulation. Later on I found out that it is a fairly routine pimp question, when asked about the most common site for an extra-adrenal pheochromocytome. I just didn't expect it after fixing a blown aneurysm.

 

[Meerkatology]

Why do they ask anatomy questions?

they are too lazy to think of something to actually teach, yet they don't want to be awkward and not say anything to you.

most easily accessible and brain dead questions to come up with during a surgery is anatomy...

 

[naus]

most easily accessible and brain dead questions to come up with during a surgery is anatomy...

Yet many still can't answer them correctly. Maybe that's why they ask. And you know, a good grasp of anatomy is actually important for surgery.

 

[Meerkatology]

Yet many still can't answer them correctly. Maybe that's why they ask. And you know, a good grasp of anatomy is actually important for surgery.

thing is, unless im going into surgery, i don't give a crap about detailed anatomy. even if i learned, i would forget before residency anyway.

every1 has to do surgery as a rotation, they should teach us what is relevent to everyone, i.e. the pathology, post surgical management etc etc

 

[Random Anesthesiologist]

Why do they ask anatomy questions?

they are too lazy to think of something to actually teach, yet they don't want to be awkward and not say anything to you.

most easily accessible and brain dead questions to come up with during a surgery is anatomy...

Maybe because they're not operating on your psyche?

First you have to learn the fundamentals of anatomy in a live surgical situation before moving any further.

 

[ucsfstudents]

No, you can't fail for not knowing all of the pimp question. Review your anatomy and the disease before going into a case.

 

[Jambo1]

If you're scrubbing in on a hernia, make sure that you know the life history of Dr. Hesselbach, and not just the borders of his triangle.

AHAHAHAHAHAHA

👍 +1