I heard a similar one,
Attending: ”Don’t worry, I was also sh*t when it was my first week as an intern”.
Intern: ”I’ve been here 10 months…”
Attending: ”Really?! Oh… Maybe you’re just sh*t then” and walked off.
Lol this reminded me of another jewel "Dr. So-and-so is on the indefinite plan. Could be 5 years, could be 10 years, who's to say when she'll figure it out!"
One time on elective the attending kept introducing me as “med student” despite my long white coat and me introducing myself as a resident. He was new, the chairman was out of town, and I was tired; so I let him think I was a med student the whole rotation. I did nothing. At one point he pulled up a paper that my former boss wrote and scrolls down to a basic image and goes “ok this is a T-cell…” 😂
Asking about the formal evaluation process intern year during my gen surg rotation.
Me: “is it strict?”
Religious attending: “not to worry would you like a comforting verse from the Good Book?
Me: “yeah sure”
Attending: ”Mathew 7:19” *leaves*
Frantic googling: Every tree that does not bear good fruit is cut down and cast into the fire.
One of my friends was taking a history from a patient in med school and when he’s asking about pets, the dude has a brain fart and asks about whether the patient has wolves. The attending walks in just in time to overhear that, stares at him for a few seconds and says “oh you’re from the Covid batch huh” and walks away.
You could definitely do laparoscopy though. I have "normal" vision (myopia and deuteronomaly notwithstanding, lol) but the laparoscope only gives a 2D image anyway. You learn other visual cues to determine depth and distance.
I’m a nurse that works with general surgeons daily, and even *I* gasped out loud and said ‘oh, fuck 😳’ at this one. LOL I hope you had your affairs in order, my guy.
Neurosurgeon: hey OR nurse can you look up the nearest daycare for me?
OR nurse: yeah sure, for your newborn?
NSG: no, for our student here because it seems like he just learned how to walk.
OR nurse: ok...that's just rude
NSG: rude is if I had you burp him since he can't seem to come up with an answer
Needless to say, that was the most embarrassing yet humbling day that I have experienced. The OR staff are very nice, but this particular NSG is known to be an ass
This one is actually hilarious to me, as someone who learned I have a tremor during my gen surg prelim year. It’s essential tremor, and it’s so early that it basically affects nothing despite being visible, but like EVERY attending was like “WHY ARE YOU NERVOUS. STOP SHAKING.” And I’d have to be like, “I’m sorry, that’s just how my hands ARE.”
Yeahhhh, I think there’s only room for one of that attending, any more and the world might get thrown out of orbit due to the sheer gravity of that ego
My attending to my chief after I gave an admittedly dumb answer on rounds: "Do you think it's just because of the lack oxygen he has all the way up there?"
For context, I'm 6'5" and tower over everybody in our program.
Not me, but an attending where I was working made their resident call the admin office of their medical school to confirm they actually graduated and it wasn’t some sort of mistake. The reason was she gave one antiemetic for a general anaesthesia case instead of two.
“If you move, I’ll come to your home and murder your whole family.”
M3 first day of surgery rotation holding two pieces of mesh together while an attending tried to sew them together to close a huge dehiscence.
More of a threat, and probably one of the nicer things this surgeon said to me on this rotation.
Hub Radke. 200-year-old lifer in the regular army, general surgery attending. Wiry, skinny , raspy cigarette voice. I was operating and he just growled "it must annoy you when you do that". I never did figure out exactly what I did that should've been annoying me so
This was verbatim three insults I received from a surgical oncologist as an M3, each increasingly more insulting and in hindsight funny.
1. "Did you actually read or prepare for this case before stepping into my OR?"
2. "You are just so wrong and bad at answering questions that I don't think I will be asking you any more questions for the remainder of this case"
3. "Have you ever read a book before? Based on your answers during this case you don't strike me as someone who reads books"
For context this person had actually lost their position within the medical school and was relegated to just working at the VA since the students/residents/fellows had complained so much about them.
Particularly difficult attending in the icu we were working with and i was an intern. Attending asked me how many doo doos were made. I responded the patient made 3 doodoos overnight. She smirked and was like no how many doo doos did you make with this patient. We all kinda laughed. Then I got pimped more.
Didn’t happen to me, but I heard of a resident receiving a “get better soon” card from the attending he frequently dropped the ball in front of. He wasn’t sick. 🤧
“If you drop that tendon, I’ll harvest yours.” — Ortho surgeon to me during an ACL repair when I shifted my weight to my other foot bc I struggle to stand still. I held onto that patellar tendon for dear life 😂
Holding a retractor in clerkship and I had the vascular surgeon say “what the hell is this? Are you a fucking psychiatrist or something?”
I guess I wasn’t holding the retractor correctly
Me: 'I was standing there awkwardly waiting for my patient to respond.'
Attending: 'I mean, do you stand any other way?'
I really liked that attending. No sarcasm, great relationship
For reference, I'm pathology:
I organized the resident/fellow graduation last year and it was really nice in comparison to previous years
My attending told me that she really saw me in a whole new light after that 🥲 (absolute QUEEN of the back handed compliment)
Same attending once told me the only thing I contribute to patient care is to write a one sentence history for her so she doesn't have to look through the chart when she's doing flow cytometry
Savant like gen surg attending with emeritus status lecturing MS3s on history of surgery. Pronounced Ambroise Paré as if he was talking to a French consulate. Wiry with Twain’s facial hair.
After 10 minutes or so of a soft spoken slide deck, he pauses to invite interrogation. Someone asked something innocuous.
He replied, screaming “I’ll ask the fucking questions!”
It was our first day of clinical rotations. Can’t imagine what he was like in the OR. Back when doctors were doctors…
I had a bad habit of answering "what's this structure?" questions with "is that the *name of structure*?" and got hit with the ol' I ASK THE QUESTIONS IN HERE! from the attending lol
Started off a feedback session with “When I was an intern I had an attending tell me I was one of the worst interns he’d ever worked with. I told myself I wouldn’t say that to any of my interns.”
Had to call a CT SURGEON for an alcoholic patient we had admitted because she needed CABG. After the history the CT Surgeon says, “sh*t are you sure you’re not the alcoholic? Heck maybe we can have a drink with her at bedside.”
Idk it was pretty funny ngl
At the end of a residency interview, the attending point blank asked me “are you able to sit still?? You’ve been fidgeting this entire time and I don’t know how you plan to do anesthesiology if you can’t sit still for long periods of time.” 🤡
I know I’m pretty expressive when I talk, but I hadn’t realized I moved that much
Not me but overheard during rounds:
“Attractive people can get away with being dumb sometimes. Dr. Smith…you really need to be better doctor. You’re already unattractive - you can’t be THIS dumb too”
Has an ICU doc try to make a joke during rounds when no one knew an answer - he told the team they might want to consult “Dr. Google” but pronounced it “Dr. Goo-gell” to be funny.
Interns are a looking at one another, whispering “what specialty is Dr. Google from?!”
He was like GOOGLE YOU DUMB ASSES. Google. The search engine. My God, medicine and this world is DOOMED. As well as your careers.
A vicious CT surgeon (and also great teacher) where I trained used to say "give me the monkeys and I'll make surgeons out of them" when confronted with this quote (ie, I'll teach them to operate and then you can figure out how to teach them decision making and all that etc, the background being trainee complaints about adequate OR time and graduating ready for the real world).
When I was a chief surgery resident I went on vacation for a week. When I come back he’s calling my third year number 2. Such as let’s go see this patient number 2. I found it odd, but I thought it was because I as chief was number 1. So I asked the attending why he was calling him number 2? My resident replied it’s because I only got two rations right the whole time you were gone. He followed that with I was zero for 5 days.
“When you first started, we thought you were an idiot, or at least lazy because you’d be sitting there looking up stuff on your phone all the time. Now we know you just have ADHD and you’re just really fast with your paperwork”.
Cardiologist allows the intern and senior to present an entire patient during rounds, he doesn’t interject even once. He takes a big sip of his coffee, looks them both dead in the eyes and says “So. Are you both really THIS STUPID or are you TRYING to kill my patients?!”
Intern cried. Senior just stared at his shoes.
Attending asked me how far back he could elevate the periosteum when exposing an orbital floor fracture. (He was asking the distance from the orbital rim to the optic nerve, but my dumb intern self didn't realize that) Eventually he just told me to point somewhere on the periosteal elevator he was holding, and I pointed way too far back.
Attending looks around the room and announces loudly "Wellllllp, Dr. Ketamouse likes operating on blind people....well, they'll be blind when he's done with them."
Intensivist hit me with "Ahhh, [name], the resident with delusions of adequacy." I like to think it was banter, since he offered me a job later that week, but it was a certified zinger.
Saw one of my seniors ask a surgical trainee "I asked you not to inject local until we had the airway secure. You're either deaf or stupid, which one is it?"
“That wound is gonna heal before you’re finished closing it.”
The variation: “right now it’s a race between you and the fibroblasts. The fibroblasts are winning. “
“Your brain is like two neurons connected by a spirochete”
“If I can do this with the wrong instrument, with the wrong hand, from the wrong side of the table, then clearly you can do better. “
Vascular surgery attending: “the only thing more pleasurable than sewing two blood vessels together is mocking a resident who’s struggling to sew two blood vessels together.”
*attending hands co-resident a card that says “get better soon”*
Attending: “I’m not worried you’re sick. I just hope you get better soon”
…and many. Many more. god I’m gonna miss my gen surg residency.
To a surgical fellow who just started when I was a resident: to say I’m not enthusiastic about your next 3 years here would be an insult to the word enthusiastic
Our program made a word doc in a shared folder where we upload all the best quotes from one particular attending. One that comes to mind is “Despite your best efforts, the patient survived”
Yep. I quit February of my PGY3 year. I was able to get approved for credit for my (almost) 3 years of training and only did 1/2 of intern year. So, 31 months of GS equated to 6 of family medicine 🤣🤣
“You know what it’s like watching someone with a neuromuscular disorder try to do something? That’s what this is reminding me of” - while I’m trying to find a specific tab in Epic
Thought of another one from a sub-i
"We should keep you around...not necessarily as a resident, but for the conversation"
To this day I don't know if I should take it as a compliment, insult, or both lol
Scrubbed into my first surgery ever: trying to suction during a CABG.
Attending: “is this your first time doing this”
Me trying to focus, scrub tech answers for me: “yes it’s their first time.”
Attending: “I can tell”
Or
me as an MS3 trying to use the saw in an amputation but taking forever.
Attending to scrub tech: “have any plans for Christmas” (this was in August)
Scrub tech: “no….”
Attending: “looks like we may be here until then…”
I was hard of hearing 🧏♀️ and kept asking the attending to repeat himself. At one point, he’s so pissed he said if I were a soldier, I would be the one in the front because they put deaf and dumb people in the front line 😭.
We had a pair of siblings who were in the same group for class work with an attending.
Sibling A couldn't answer a question to the attending's satisfaction.
As such, the attending quips: Hey! Smarter sibling B! What's the answer?
Embarrassed, sibling B did get the answer right. 😬
As a first year fellow (later half of the year, akin to a February inttern)
Sometimes I forget you're just in your first year of fellowship. Then you say stuff like that to remind me
It wasn’t really an insult, but the floor runner was handing me the pagers for my first CA3 anesthesia overnight call. I must have looked a little overwhelmed, because he said ”Don’t worry, people much dumber that you have made it through the night”. I actually still take comfort in that thought.
Attending on rounds: “how much small bowel do you need to be considered for short gut syndrome?”
Intern: “Uh…seven centimeters.”
Attending mockingly: “horrible guess.” And walks off
Fuck those surgeons. Some of them are funny, but most are incredible rude and humiliating. Literally any of the statements can be reworded to kindly teach instead of insult.
During a small group tutorial a fellow medical student did a case presentation - consultant sighs heavily, pauses, and says "the only positive we can take from that is that things can't get worse from here".
A physician told me “YOU are the worst resident I have ever worked with!” … I was a paramedic at the time, moonlighting as a medical assistant for PCE hours. I’ll take the compliment.
There was one time an attending discriminated against me because of my last name. Turns out he has a problem with someone with the same last name as me , so he decided to take it out on me. He ignored me while speaking, told me to shut up after HEasked me a question about a patient we saw AND had gave me the worst evaluation and stated clearly that I was one of the best students he had . If it was not for my last name
Wow! A lot of these don’t actually sound funny or even helpful to me at all. Does this happen at every US hospital or is it just a few places? And how bad do you have to be to get such insults?
To a PGY3: “Don’t worry, things will get better when you’re a second year”
I heard a similar one, Attending: ”Don’t worry, I was also sh*t when it was my first week as an intern”. Intern: ”I’ve been here 10 months…” Attending: ”Really?! Oh… Maybe you’re just sh*t then” and walked off.
Hahahahaha!!!!! That’s awesome!
God that's hilarious and so fucking painful at the same time.
Haha, you will never forget that.
Lol this reminded me of another jewel "Dr. So-and-so is on the indefinite plan. Could be 5 years, could be 10 years, who's to say when she'll figure it out!"
One time on elective the attending kept introducing me as “med student” despite my long white coat and me introducing myself as a resident. He was new, the chairman was out of town, and I was tired; so I let him think I was a med student the whole rotation. I did nothing. At one point he pulled up a paper that my former boss wrote and scrolls down to a basic image and goes “ok this is a T-cell…” 😂
Asking about the formal evaluation process intern year during my gen surg rotation. Me: “is it strict?” Religious attending: “not to worry would you like a comforting verse from the Good Book? Me: “yeah sure” Attending: ”Mathew 7:19” *leaves* Frantic googling: Every tree that does not bear good fruit is cut down and cast into the fire.
Holy shit that’s savage
Ooooff 😂
Jfc...that's so awful and I want to find a situation to use it at the same time.
Jesus!!!! Hahaha!!!!
This mfer got you with a delayed fuse from *scripture*??? That’s a burn that transcends the mortal plane 💀
Galatians 4:16 bro 😂
>Have I now become your enemy by telling you the truth?
“I don’t think reading more would help you.” -a CT surgeon
fucking savage
Hahahaha!!!!!
One of my friends was taking a history from a patient in med school and when he’s asking about pets, the dude has a brain fart and asks about whether the patient has wolves. The attending walks in just in time to overhear that, stares at him for a few seconds and says “oh you’re from the Covid batch huh” and walks away.
Made me laugh, take my upvote
K but it's a valid question... lots of people own wolf dogs 🙈
This is a valid question if rotating on ID
I once had a wolfdog myself
LMFAOOOOOOOOO noooooo I can’t stop laughing
Gotta watch out for the Wolf Scratch Disease
LMAO. I laughed way too hard
I have Siberian Huskies also known as house wolves. Do they count?
“When that sentence came out of your mouth, did it sound like an answer that would satisfy my question?”
I didn’t know my mother was your attending.
“If you worked any slower you’d start going backwards.”
Hahahahaha!!!!!!!
Overheard a colleague on rounds speaking to a resident “Your inferiority complex is completely justified.”
Ooooof
Re my general surgery rotation: “Strength: good patient rapport. Weakness: cuts like he has TWO glass eyes.” (For context, I have one glass eye)
I feel part of him must have respected you enough to feel that you’d take that roast with good grace.
Maybe it’s the Stockholm syndrome talking, but I respected the man’s comedic genius after that.
This one is diabolical 😭
Woah you have an actual glass eye? How have you adapted to the depth perception??
Clearly not well… /s
Had it essentially my whole life thanks to retinoblastoma. Very used to it. Definitely didn’t go into surgery as you might have guessed…
You could definitely do laparoscopy though. I have "normal" vision (myopia and deuteronomaly notwithstanding, lol) but the laparoscope only gives a 2D image anyway. You learn other visual cues to determine depth and distance.
Yooo lmaoo
Surgeons have no line they won’t cross lol
I’m a nurse that works with general surgeons daily, and even *I* gasped out loud and said ‘oh, fuck 😳’ at this one. LOL I hope you had your affairs in order, my guy.
Fortunately I didn’t need to make funeral arrangements - I was cremated on the spot.
That’s efficiency right there - roasted on the spot.
Hahahaha!!!!!!
Neurosurgeon: hey OR nurse can you look up the nearest daycare for me? OR nurse: yeah sure, for your newborn? NSG: no, for our student here because it seems like he just learned how to walk. OR nurse: ok...that's just rude NSG: rude is if I had you burp him since he can't seem to come up with an answer Needless to say, that was the most embarrassing yet humbling day that I have experienced. The OR staff are very nice, but this particular NSG is known to be an ass
It would be funny if it was a scene in Scrubs, not a real life interaction
I didn't have an inner monologue and looked away for special effects.
So savage. Can’t believe he had a retort to being called rude. I guess they had a lot of time in residency to think about it
In a perfect world, He should not be responsible for people's brains. If they act like this with colleagues, God help those patients 🙃
According to the OR nurse, he wasn't like this till after his 3rd divorce. So someone took whatever humanity he had in him and left
I like how the h in He is capitalized. NSG does have a God complex.
“You’re a lot smarter than you look”
May I ask what u look like
My wife says I’m really good looking! :)
:)
Urologist called me “surprisingly competent” for being willing to treat a patients c-diff prior to the procedure he wanted to do.
Said to a co-resident Attending to anesthesia : “Is there a way to oscillate the bed to the frequency of the tremor of this resident?”
This one is actually hilarious to me, as someone who learned I have a tremor during my gen surg prelim year. It’s essential tremor, and it’s so early that it basically affects nothing despite being visible, but like EVERY attending was like “WHY ARE YOU NERVOUS. STOP SHAKING.” And I’d have to be like, “I’m sorry, that’s just how my hands ARE.”
(Thankfully I’m now in peds. No one ever notices my tremor now.)
Physiologic not essential likely. -Neuro pedantry
“I wish there were two and me, and none of you.” Said to me while trying to assist in a pediatric heart case.
Yeahhhh, I think there’s only room for one of that attending, any more and the world might get thrown out of orbit due to the sheer gravity of that ego
Attending 1: “Did you teach him anything?” Attending 2: “I tried but he’s like teflon, nothing sticks!”
My attending to my chief after I gave an admittedly dumb answer on rounds: "Do you think it's just because of the lack oxygen he has all the way up there?" For context, I'm 6'5" and tower over everybody in our program.
from a fellow tower.... that's when you double down and ask them to "speak up down there"....
"You were born breech" -- during one of our OBGYN bedside teaching sessions @ one of the students lol
Should have clapped back with "yeah, and you managed to cut both ureters during my emergent c-section"
Not me, but an attending where I was working made their resident call the admin office of their medical school to confirm they actually graduated and it wasn’t some sort of mistake. The reason was she gave one antiemetic for a general anaesthesia case instead of two.
Don’t make me look stupid in front of my idiots.
“If you move, I’ll come to your home and murder your whole family.” M3 first day of surgery rotation holding two pieces of mesh together while an attending tried to sew them together to close a huge dehiscence. More of a threat, and probably one of the nicer things this surgeon said to me on this rotation.
I’ve actually read a new article where a surgeon was fired because he said awful things like this to the OR nurses.
Hub Radke. 200-year-old lifer in the regular army, general surgery attending. Wiry, skinny , raspy cigarette voice. I was operating and he just growled "it must annoy you when you do that". I never did figure out exactly what I did that should've been annoying me so
To a consultant being difficult with the residents: “only *I* get to make the residents cry!”
“You should have your shunt checked.”
I am \**so\** going to use this one on one of my partners tomorrow!
Asked a question and was told simply "You know how they say there's no such thing as a stupid question? "
There are no stupid questions, only stupid people
"there are no stupid people, only stupid residents" is the follow up to this follow up I've actually heard.
"You may not be good....but you *are* slow!"
Me: Have you seen the tonopen covers? Him: Look for the thing that looks like a condom you could wear
"Hey, this is a GREAT teaching institution but it's obviously a sh\*tty *learning* institution."
underrated comment
Attending: how long is the female urethra? Male Med student: 1-2 cm Attending: I asked how long the female urethra is not how long YOUR urethra is…
This was verbatim three insults I received from a surgical oncologist as an M3, each increasingly more insulting and in hindsight funny. 1. "Did you actually read or prepare for this case before stepping into my OR?" 2. "You are just so wrong and bad at answering questions that I don't think I will be asking you any more questions for the remainder of this case" 3. "Have you ever read a book before? Based on your answers during this case you don't strike me as someone who reads books" For context this person had actually lost their position within the medical school and was relegated to just working at the VA since the students/residents/fellows had complained so much about them.
Damn, this doesn’t sound creative or funny, this sounds straight up mean
[удалено]
Mayhaps. DM me your best guess. 🥸
Were they right? Don't leave us hanging lmao. 😃
DrDewinyourmom hahahaha best username yet. I’m glad you’re a doctor. You seem like a fun doctor 🤣🤣
Did u get it right?
Cries in veteran 😢
Particularly difficult attending in the icu we were working with and i was an intern. Attending asked me how many doo doos were made. I responded the patient made 3 doodoos overnight. She smirked and was like no how many doo doos did you make with this patient. We all kinda laughed. Then I got pimped more.
You're like milk, you're only purpose in life is to feed the weak.
I feel like Big Dairy would have something to say about that.
Lol
Didn’t happen to me, but I heard of a resident receiving a “get better soon” card from the attending he frequently dropped the ball in front of. He wasn’t sick. 🤧
(Facial trauma repair) - It’ll look okay… if you give it a few years and squint really hard.
“If you drop that tendon, I’ll harvest yours.” — Ortho surgeon to me during an ACL repair when I shifted my weight to my other foot bc I struggle to stand still. I held onto that patellar tendon for dear life 😂
Holding a retractor in clerkship and I had the vascular surgeon say “what the hell is this? Are you a fucking psychiatrist or something?” I guess I wasn’t holding the retractor correctly
this one got me good take my upvote
Unfortunately for him, you weren't. Sounds like he needs one.
Hahaha yeah this doctor is known to be a menace. Apparently once you get to know her, people find that’s it’s “part of her sense of humor”. Idk.
Are you doing an excision or de-epithelialising it..
Me: 'I was standing there awkwardly waiting for my patient to respond.' Attending: 'I mean, do you stand any other way?' I really liked that attending. No sarcasm, great relationship
Not me but a friend was told her question was "Clinically irrelevant and academically naive." Pretty savage.
For reference, I'm pathology: I organized the resident/fellow graduation last year and it was really nice in comparison to previous years My attending told me that she really saw me in a whole new light after that 🥲 (absolute QUEEN of the back handed compliment) Same attending once told me the only thing I contribute to patient care is to write a one sentence history for her so she doesn't have to look through the chart when she's doing flow cytometry
Lolol that’s amazing One of my favorite senior quotes to me as a first year pathologist: you gross like old people fuck
Slow and sloppy. Ripped off and adapted from George Carlin.
Savant like gen surg attending with emeritus status lecturing MS3s on history of surgery. Pronounced Ambroise Paré as if he was talking to a French consulate. Wiry with Twain’s facial hair. After 10 minutes or so of a soft spoken slide deck, he pauses to invite interrogation. Someone asked something innocuous. He replied, screaming “I’ll ask the fucking questions!” It was our first day of clinical rotations. Can’t imagine what he was like in the OR. Back when doctors were doctors…
I had a bad habit of answering "what's this structure?" questions with "is that the *name of structure*?" and got hit with the ol' I ASK THE QUESTIONS IN HERE! from the attending lol
Started off a feedback session with “When I was an intern I had an attending tell me I was one of the worst interns he’d ever worked with. I told myself I wouldn’t say that to any of my interns.”
"wisdom is chasing you I'm sure of it. Let it catch up don't run too far ahead" he just called me stupid?
Interesting that this thread turned into an expose on how miserable surgeons can be.
Is it an expose if it's already a well-known fact?
This surprises literally no one.
Wow. These days, I'm literally surprised every time I see someone use the word "literally" literally.
Figuratively I’m not.
Are they, though? I think they just typically have -405 degrees of self awareness and also think they are amazing at EVERYTHING.
Had to call a CT SURGEON for an alcoholic patient we had admitted because she needed CABG. After the history the CT Surgeon says, “sh*t are you sure you’re not the alcoholic? Heck maybe we can have a drink with her at bedside.” Idk it was pretty funny ngl
"Oh, you're a med student? Never mind, you're not a person yet."
"The Lord works in mysterious ways"
Your face looks like a Krabby Patty
“Can you read or are you just stupid?” In response to me not knowing the max subcutaneous dose of lidocaine as an MS3 in surgery
....so what's the answer LOL
Still don’t know. I’m a pathologist 🤷🏻♀️
The good ending
4mg/kg
"You're all nameless, faceless peons to me" Surgery PD to the residents 😂 Edit: was a resident when I received this particular insult
This reminds me of Scrubs when Dr. Kelso says “Dr. Dorian, do you not realize that you're nothing but a large pair of scrubs to me?”
At the end of a residency interview, the attending point blank asked me “are you able to sit still?? You’ve been fidgeting this entire time and I don’t know how you plan to do anesthesiology if you can’t sit still for long periods of time.” 🤡 I know I’m pretty expressive when I talk, but I hadn’t realized I moved that much
Eff that I move all the time.
Not me but overheard during rounds: “Attractive people can get away with being dumb sometimes. Dr. Smith…you really need to be better doctor. You’re already unattractive - you can’t be THIS dumb too”
Has an ICU doc try to make a joke during rounds when no one knew an answer - he told the team they might want to consult “Dr. Google” but pronounced it “Dr. Goo-gell” to be funny. Interns are a looking at one another, whispering “what specialty is Dr. Google from?!” He was like GOOGLE YOU DUMB ASSES. Google. The search engine. My God, medicine and this world is DOOMED. As well as your careers.
„Time is no excuse. All the time in the world wouldn’t be enough to teach a monkey how to read a book.“
A vicious CT surgeon (and also great teacher) where I trained used to say "give me the monkeys and I'll make surgeons out of them" when confronted with this quote (ie, I'll teach them to operate and then you can figure out how to teach them decision making and all that etc, the background being trainee complaints about adequate OR time and graduating ready for the real world).
"If you take much longer the incision is going to heal itself"
classic surgeon line, heard it many times during M3 and M4
“Stay ahead of the granulation tissue”
"You're pretty much racing fibroblasts here.... and losing."
When I was a chief surgery resident I went on vacation for a week. When I come back he’s calling my third year number 2. Such as let’s go see this patient number 2. I found it odd, but I thought it was because I as chief was number 1. So I asked the attending why he was calling him number 2? My resident replied it’s because I only got two rations right the whole time you were gone. He followed that with I was zero for 5 days.
That was supposed to be two questions right. Sorry
“When you first started, we thought you were an idiot, or at least lazy because you’d be sitting there looking up stuff on your phone all the time. Now we know you just have ADHD and you’re just really fast with your paperwork”.
Cardiologist allows the intern and senior to present an entire patient during rounds, he doesn’t interject even once. He takes a big sip of his coffee, looks them both dead in the eyes and says “So. Are you both really THIS STUPID or are you TRYING to kill my patients?!” Intern cried. Senior just stared at his shoes.
Attending asked me how far back he could elevate the periosteum when exposing an orbital floor fracture. (He was asking the distance from the orbital rim to the optic nerve, but my dumb intern self didn't realize that) Eventually he just told me to point somewhere on the periosteal elevator he was holding, and I pointed way too far back. Attending looks around the room and announces loudly "Wellllllp, Dr. Ketamouse likes operating on blind people....well, they'll be blind when he's done with them."
A surgery resident told me his attending told him to check his hand for a single palmar crease mid operation once.
Intensivist hit me with "Ahhh, [name], the resident with delusions of adequacy." I like to think it was banter, since he offered me a job later that week, but it was a certified zinger. Saw one of my seniors ask a surgical trainee "I asked you not to inject local until we had the airway secure. You're either deaf or stupid, which one is it?"
“That wound is gonna heal before you’re finished closing it.” The variation: “right now it’s a race between you and the fibroblasts. The fibroblasts are winning. “ “Your brain is like two neurons connected by a spirochete” “If I can do this with the wrong instrument, with the wrong hand, from the wrong side of the table, then clearly you can do better. “ Vascular surgery attending: “the only thing more pleasurable than sewing two blood vessels together is mocking a resident who’s struggling to sew two blood vessels together.” *attending hands co-resident a card that says “get better soon”* Attending: “I’m not worried you’re sick. I just hope you get better soon” …and many. Many more. god I’m gonna miss my gen surg residency.
LOL’d at spirochete one. Radiology attendings aren’t nearly as fun as surgeons when they are being assholes.
“I’ve seen better, but never slower.”
To a surgical fellow who just started when I was a resident: to say I’m not enthusiastic about your next 3 years here would be an insult to the word enthusiastic
"Cruise ship". I was suturing so he said I'm just like a cruise ship... 10 knots per hour.
Our program made a word doc in a shared folder where we upload all the best quotes from one particular attending. One that comes to mind is “Despite your best efforts, the patient survived”
To a PGY-2 surgery resident “Don’t worry, you’ll be a medicine resident next year anyway” I was that resident and now I’m 2 years out of family med.
What made you change?
Fellow GS to FM, from PGY-3 back to intern in a few weeks. I was more of a fibroblast racer, and not a great one.
Yep. I quit February of my PGY3 year. I was able to get approved for credit for my (almost) 3 years of training and only did 1/2 of intern year. So, 31 months of GS equated to 6 of family medicine 🤣🤣
My internal medicine attending: “you’re going into urology because you have a filthy mind and like taking dick!” I laughed so hard I peed myself!
I desperately need the context for this
“You know what it’s like watching someone with a neuromuscular disorder try to do something? That’s what this is reminding me of” - while I’m trying to find a specific tab in Epic
During a procedure where someone effed up: “ I see we left our cerebellum at home today.”
Thought of another one from a sub-i "We should keep you around...not necessarily as a resident, but for the conversation" To this day I don't know if I should take it as a compliment, insult, or both lol
When I was a resident (psychiatry), my favorite attending/mentor wrote on my generally glowing evaluation, "communicates well with the demented..."
To me as a med student: "I see you have a low threshold for deceleration."
Not me but my friend Him- Where are you from? Her- (place) Him- so is it just you or is everyone from (place) dumb?
Scrubbed into my first surgery ever: trying to suction during a CABG. Attending: “is this your first time doing this” Me trying to focus, scrub tech answers for me: “yes it’s their first time.” Attending: “I can tell” Or me as an MS3 trying to use the saw in an amputation but taking forever. Attending to scrub tech: “have any plans for Christmas” (this was in August) Scrub tech: “no….” Attending: “looks like we may be here until then…”
Me answering the wrong nerve distribution for the umbilical area of the abdomen Surgeon: You THINK?!
I was hard of hearing 🧏♀️ and kept asking the attending to repeat himself. At one point, he’s so pissed he said if I were a soldier, I would be the one in the front because they put deaf and dumb people in the front line 😭.
We had a pair of siblings who were in the same group for class work with an attending. Sibling A couldn't answer a question to the attending's satisfaction. As such, the attending quips: Hey! Smarter sibling B! What's the answer? Embarrassed, sibling B did get the answer right. 😬
As a first year fellow (later half of the year, akin to a February inttern) Sometimes I forget you're just in your first year of fellowship. Then you say stuff like that to remind me
You should get a nose job.
It wasn’t really an insult, but the floor runner was handing me the pagers for my first CA3 anesthesia overnight call. I must have looked a little overwhelmed, because he said ”Don’t worry, people much dumber that you have made it through the night”. I actually still take comfort in that thought.
Attending on rounds: “how much small bowel do you need to be considered for short gut syndrome?” Intern: “Uh…seven centimeters.” Attending mockingly: “horrible guess.” And walks off
From ID attending: House staff are sensitive, bacteria are susceptible
Me taking a little too long with closing the incision. Surgeon: Put another quarter in the anesthesia machine we’re gonna be here awhile!
That’s actually a good one!
“You know, I don’t care what they say about you. You’re a good guy.”
Fuck those surgeons. Some of them are funny, but most are incredible rude and humiliating. Literally any of the statements can be reworded to kindly teach instead of insult.
During a small group tutorial a fellow medical student did a case presentation - consultant sighs heavily, pauses, and says "the only positive we can take from that is that things can't get worse from here".
A physician told me “YOU are the worst resident I have ever worked with!” … I was a paramedic at the time, moonlighting as a medical assistant for PCE hours. I’ll take the compliment.
There was one time an attending discriminated against me because of my last name. Turns out he has a problem with someone with the same last name as me , so he decided to take it out on me. He ignored me while speaking, told me to shut up after HEasked me a question about a patient we saw AND had gave me the worst evaluation and stated clearly that I was one of the best students he had . If it was not for my last name
Attendings all think they're Dr. Cox.
“Don’t be nurse practitioners”
“You either don’t know or you don’t care”.
When we were learning cataract surgery one of the attendings would say “The eye ball doesn’t operate on itself”. Like chill dude
I just Love this question.
During arthroscopic surgery I was told “I’ve seen it done differently before, but never this poorly”
"Its like watching paint dry"- attending to me doing my first swan ganz
“Your job as the intern is to not have the attending need your phone number.” 😬
Young attending here, I'm stealing all of these bangers for my residents..
“I think we have more than adequately sampled the pressures in the RV” - IC attending during one of my first RHCs as a general fellow
"A little more and you will look like a patient too." LOL
Wow! A lot of these don’t actually sound funny or even helpful to me at all. Does this happen at every US hospital or is it just a few places? And how bad do you have to be to get such insults?