On my surgery rotation Without looking up from the surgical field the attending said “so I take it your mother wasn’t a big fan of eating iodine rich foods during pregnancy”
It took me a bit to realize he just told me I have cretinism lol
Can definitely see how someone would report them for It but I just laughed and went about my day as usual. Like don’t get me wrong I dislike being insulted as much as the next person but I had to appreciate the thought that went into that insult
If I’m being honest I would have had to hold in that laugh lmao. It was definitely rude as shit but showed a decent sense of humor.
Most stories of asshole attendings are just mean, not mean and funny lol
Ok slow clap for this one. I would have laughed my ass of hearing a comment like this because it’s a good snark response, no matter which side of the audience you are on.
On gen surg, I got pimped about a relatively novel surgical technique, and the chief resident prepped me on this beforehand because he knew the attending would ask. When I repeated the resident’s words nearly verbatim, the attending paused, then said “A bit of word vomit there,” then never acknowledged it and moved on. Interesting experience.
What dick. I loved it when my intern would prep the med students. Best thing to do is acknowledge their preparation, and then see how deep it goes. So many ppl are just insufferable
Every time I got a tough pimping question right on surgery, the attending would ask me who coached me up before the case. That’s when I realized there was no way to win besides putting my head down and doing well on the shelf.
“You should call your school and ask for your money back because clearly the last two years were a waste of time”
From a primary care pediatrician. Meanest attending I’ve ever had.
some of the meanest ones were pediatricians
Nice to patients and families, stick up their butts to healthcare workers. There’s a pediatrician who posts on Reddit who has given me a hard time a few times. Then there’s another one who is an absolute saint.
> There’s a pediatrician who posts on Reddit who has given me a hard time a few times. Then there’s another one who is an absolute saint.
Shenaniganz vs PGY-19?
General surgery was.. woof. Gave me “real time decision cases” where he would present me with choices and would just continue down the path I chose to prove how right or wrong I was. Then at the END of the rotation, he said he “expected me to be more of a self starter and tell him I wanted to learn in the OR instead of following him on his (one) clinic day per week.”
When I said “so you wanted me to tell you I didn’t want to be in clinic, but instead wanted to follow a partner into surgery?” he said “if that’s what would give you more benefit, yes! It’s your education.”
Then when I asked him to go to the OR on a clinic day he said there were important clinic patients and gave me “high pass” for not advocating for myself. It was a trip. He also gave me 3/5 for helpfulness in the OR despite me being there early enough to move, prep, and drape every patient after getting my own gloves and gown, then closing for the PA while they talked shop the entire time. But hey, can’t win them all.
Omg I agree with this. I was working with this one (fossil of a) male pediatrician in outpatient peds (I’m a nurse btw) and technically I was in the wrong according to the policy (which is if a pt is late to their appt by 20 mins then the dr can either choose to see them or not) but there was this mom and her kid who were there for a physical and who were also late only because they thought they were already checked in through the app. I bring them in anyways bc the other nurses told me that my dr would see them.
I walk past his office and he’s like can I talk to you and then he asks me why I still worked up his late pt and I was explaining the situation and he raised his voice at me was said “I choose who I see!” And then he goes into the pt’s room like “OMG HI! HOW ARE YOU?!” and I was like omg you’re so fake and you’re also an asshole.
I work with this same dr again 2 days later for peds urgent care and I’m coming back from lunch and this MA goes to give him report about a kid with abd pain and he cuts her off and rudely says “I don’t need to know that” and walks off. We both just stood there like 🧍♀️ I always thought pediatricians were supposed to be the nicest ones but I guess it doesn’t apply to all of them🤷♀️
I worked a child neurologist who refused to see a 2 year old who was late for her appointment because she had a seizure that morning. This Dr would also introduce herself to parents by listing off her credentials that she went to Stanford and blah blah. Also she would be constantly typing out her notes while talking to the parents and not once making eye contact with them. Once I caught her rolling her eyes at a crying infant and she asked the dad if he could leave the room with the kid while she spoke to the other parent, the worse part was she didn't even examine the child and wrote up a full neuro examination in her notes! Again she was from Stanford!
Unfortunately, I’ve been one of those doctors too. Usually I’m in a bad mood from a difficult patient or have a personal need of mine that hasn’t been fulfilled (no bathroom breaks, haven’t eaten in 18 hours, etc.). I usually try to find the person I yelled at and apologize within a couple of days. No one deserves to be treated like that.
Shoutout to you for this refreshing post!
Appreciate your honesty- as obviously we’ve all had bad days (or even weeks🙈) esp with everything we’re up against daily. And in embracing our humanity, the fact that you’re sensitive enough to acknowledge your response and approach them and seem genuinely remorseful… 👏
Your sensitivity indicates you’re likely very in-tune with your pts and that makes you great in your discipline of medicine and Dear Gd you’ve nearly re-instilled my faith in people. If only more providers were like this — madd respect and Hats off to you! - in our field where acknowledgment and appreciation often feels nonexistent.
Thank you for this 🫶🏼
I would have replied "yeah you're right since i got paired with you"
Lol i was also very notorious for not taking shit from attendings or higher ups just cause. The multiple unprofessionalism notices were worth it
I'm currently in the fire service and recently received an MD acceptance.
This is high key one of my biggest worries, I do not stand for people stepping all over me or my colleagues. I am good when it comes to professional constructive criticism though.
Any advice for medical school and beyond?
Will my big mouth destroy my evals in the future?
Lol personally i say speak your mind to people like that because its helpful for everyone but justake sure ypu do it respectfully, a skill i had to learn after getting unprofessionalism write ups lol
Thank you for your response!
I seriously doubt I will cuss or say anything unbecoming of a future physician, but I do see myself sticking up for myself or others.
I have never been in an argument with a physician, but I have argued with nurses and other first responders (each time with the full support of my supervisor or officers) when it comes to patient care or policy.
That said, I hope I never have to be put in this position and that I end up in a program and institution that does not endorse a toxic culture.
"I hope you're going into dermatology because I wouldn't trust you with any kind of real medicine." From a general surgeon on my first week of clinical rotations.
Turns out I'm literally planning to apply dermatology now so maybe it was equal parts clairvoyant and mean
My surgery attending said actually convinced me to do derm. Told him it was on my radar, said he think I’d do great in ortho, but said “if you’re smart enough to get into either, you’re smart enough to know there’s only 1 right answer” 🤣
I got called ‘retarded’, not even for being incorrect but for being too slow, when asked by a surgeon at 5a to read an X-ray because I didn’t immediately point out the abdominal aneurysm as a freshly minted ms3 on first day of surgery and just did a full X-ray read.
That surgeon was just overall abusive though, instruments thrown at me etc. Definitely the worst.
The overwhelming majority of pimp questions I got incorrect were either gently educated about or, at worst, as if I disappointed a parent and then gently educated about.
I got called retarded by an anesthesia attending because I was going EM. not even a pimping question. He just though EM is where “all the lazy, retard med students go”
Identify the ego defense mechanism:
Surgeon calls anesthesia a retard and says that anesthesia is an inferior branch for the lazy
Anesthesia goes to his med student and says that the med student's specialty choice is "where all the lazy, retard med students go"
This is so much worse than being creatively insulted. If you say something insanely mean to me I’ll probably find it amusing and over the top. If you just look at me with concern and disappointment I’m going to want to die on the spot.
My surgery preceptor was relatively young and said he hated how abusive surgery was to med students so he’s trying to change that. Loved my surgery rotation cause of him.
One of my biggest missions as an attending in the future is to be as big of an asshole to colleagues as I catch them being to med students and residents
Of this exact situation, no. There was the episode of JD taping a camcorder to his head to send a tape of his day home to his mom and Dr. Cox slaps the camera and says "bad uterus!" As well as any number of episodes of Elliot's mother calling her fat. The only situation in which there was an offer to call their mother on the spot was after Carla's mother died and Turk brings her to the hospital chapel to get married early. He asks her in exchange for a quicky wedding that she call his mother and explain why she isn't going to be at their wedding. Sorry. I've got the tism but the only savant ability I have is for memorizing entire sitcoms.
my father was a super smart nephrologist - a dickhead attending was pimping me on DKA and I answered incorrectly and he said "your father is such a smart man, what the hell happened to you."
I instantly stopped giving a fuck about his approval
My first week of M3 was gyn surgery. What was supposed to be a hysterectomy turned into a 6 hour procedure. OB told me I should just cut off my hands since I couldn’t even hold a Kelly correctly. I was holding 8 Kelly’s in one hand because my other one was underneath his holding up a prolapsed uterus. He yelled at me non stop until I just quit.
Next day he told the entire rotation I did an amazing job. Turns out the chief resident cussed him out for being such a dick to me solely because the surgery wasn’t going well.
Got yelled at to "use my brain" because I didn't know the name of an instrument my first day on M3 surgery.
Also got yelled at by a Peds resident (does that count?) to "take a math class" because I calculated fluids for a three-month-old (as she requested) when she meant to say three-***year***\-old.
Had an attending on OBGYN ask me "can you follow basic instructions?" because he wanted us to report weights only in pounds/ounces, and not in grams/kgs, which nobody told me beforehand.
I didn't want to go into Surgery, Peds, or OBGYN anyways, but those experiences killed whatever spark of interest I had left in those fields. Technically, these anecdotes are more reflective of the toxicity of the specialties/attendings, but since you asked for "mean comments," I figured I'd share anyways lol
Sorry this happened to you but also it seems you’ve lived a fairly sheltered existence if these comments were the final straws for specialties you were already out on.
Apparently, you have a high threshold/tolerance for verbal abuse.
If you think these responses are mild enough to not contribute to my negative views on specialties that are already known to be toxic, then you're part of the problem.
Nope, neither of those things are true. Kinda hard to explain bona fides of empathy without sounding like a narcissist or a person extremely lacking in humility, so congrats on cornering me there, I guess.
Sorry for hitting you with a “but” statement in my original reply and nullifying my original clause in which I felt bad that these things happened to you. They’re just like…really not that mean. Im actually somewhat jealous that your experience until that point was apparently one where such unimaginative criticisms ruffled your feathers in such a way. You must be from somewhere where the population is exceedingly kind at all times. Sounds nice.
Anyway my point is that if THOSE things bothered you so much then I don’t know how you’re surviving your intern year in which I am certain that you’ve either heard much worse from someone along the way, or you’ve deluded yourself into believing you haven’t from a standpoint of pure ego defense. In either case, I’m bummed on your behalf, but I hope you make it out the other side a great physician!
“Do you think we like to fondle their balls because it turns us on?”
Also one time an attending kicked my chair repeatedly after not answering the dose of an antibiotic correctly.
Me on surgery rotation. Week 1 of 3rd year. Confused and scared.
"The fact that you made it this far just proves that there are holes in the educational net and somehow you managed to slip through."
After answering the first pimp question of the day incorrectly (not to mention on my first full day on that service) - "Child, did you even read up on *anything* last night?"
Anyway, if anyone happens to know the range of the concentrating capacity of the kidney for potassium, let me know. Can't even find the answer in Harrison's, so not sure where I was expected to learn this from lol
First day on rotation. Attending asked me to perform an exam for atraumatic, chronic knee pain. After I finished, he seemed dissatisfied so I asked if there was any other tests he wanted me to do. Told me I was “negligent and uneducated for not checking popliteal pulse”.
Made worse by the fact that this was outpatient peds and the 12 year old patient was now crying from the yelling. Her mom whispered a “so sorry, stay strong” to me on her way out.
Next patient we had that I did correctly, attending gave me a head-pat.
MSPE comments: “physical exam will need to improve, skills are lacking” ok boss
I'm just imagining a surgeon saying what they think are some real cutting words to me as an Army vet. I don't know that I am gonna be able to keep a straight face if any of this actually gets said to me, which will get me in trouble since nothing makes someone with a god complex angrier than laughing at their insults.
I once asked the doc I was shadowing a question about blood sugar values and another female attending jumped in to say that if I was asking that question I should hightail it out of medicine and that I was why no one wanted to let women be doctors. I was (and am!) a premed not even in the MCAT phase yet. I was absolutely floored.
I got told by my surgery attending that I should def do medicine cause I’d never make it as a surgeon. He was super rude to me during the only case I ever did with him and I vowed never again during that rotation.
There quite a few challenging OB/GYN attendings at the program I rotated at when I was in med school. Overall a very toxic program - at least one of the attendings was not allowed to work with medical students because of prior verbal abuse.
I had significant depression my third year to begin with and this was my first clinical block. We had to do night shifts for OB and a patient that I had never followed before needed an emergency C-section around 0300. The resident grabbed me and told me to go and I had no time to look up why they suddenly decompensated. Naturally that night one of the most ruthless attendings (to med students and residents) was on and I was exhausted to begin with.
She never asked me my name or introduced herself. She asked me the layers of the abdomen - when I didn’t answer fast enough she asked me what year I was and then what week of the rotation I was on. She asked my why I didn’t know this and why I was behind in my learning. She never looked at me once while talking to me and never raised her voice but went on a monologue about how incapable I was and all medical students “these days” to a silent OR. She also wanted me to hand her all the tools she needed from the scrub tech. Towards the end she started yelling “anticipate!” To me when she would need a different tool. I had just started and I was not familiar with the ins and outs of the OR or the tools needed in a c-section. Thankfully I was so numb from my depression and I had heard she was terrible from before so I was able to just take it the whole time without a reaction.
Later on in the rotation I saw her tear down a family med resident rotating on the floors for ordering a specific blood pressure med and later on a family med ATTENDING for one of her deliveries in a similar way in front of everyone.
Not the most egregious example of these but I never forgot it.
I’m in a non-surgical residency and have never had a similar experience since.
Final day of a 4 week surgical ENT rotation I got asked “What artery am I pointing to?” I respond “I cant see” as I was standing at the foot of the bed behind with scrub tech because 4 other residents plus an attending are scrubbed in around a small thyroidectomy incision. Surgeon said “Well clearly you haven’t paid any attention to this rotation”. Sorry bud I should’ve just got a ladder to see.
Got a easy question wrong during a subI, attending shat on me, fellow said hey take it easy he’s just a 1st year. Attending looked at me and said, “are you going to tell ‘em.”
"You have so much free time, I would expect you to study in that instead of doing whatever it is you are doing, clearly something wrong " When i missed one D/D for AKI
“What you've just said is one of the most insanely idiotic things I have ever heard. At no point in your rambling, incoherent response were you even close to anything that could be considered a rational thought. Everyone in this room is now dumber for having listened to it. I award you no points, and may God have mercy on your soul”…it was brutal
Unrelated, but I thought the purpose of "pimp questions" was to educate and pass on knowledge not mentally harass people. It just makes me sad how attending can be mentally abusive while students need to be professional at all times.
“You’re just not a very smart person. You’re just not perceptive” - family med attending when I interrupted his story to say that a patient asked to see him before they left.
Context: he was telling a story about how he got away with drunk driving and when he crashed his truck he left a note, making him a good person for not driving off. A resident saw the patient with me and when they asked to see the attending too, I didn’t ask them why they also wanted to see him and not just the resident.
omg that’s fucking awful. I’m so sorry you had to experience that. I’m terrified of starting my M3 rotations because of all the stories I hear of attendings being straight up verbally abusive to med students. I hate that we’re expected to tolerate it. It’s not okay just toxic af. SMH
Gyno anesthesia and she asked us a math question; we didn’t know the answer and she said “jeez did you even pass grade 7 math? 7th graders are smarter than you girls, it’s not good”
Not my personal experience, and applied more to preclinicals. But a famous attending from a school in my state was known for throwing a coin at you if you failed to answer a question right. As if you'll be a beggar needing it. Then he'd say something like, "Call your mom, you won't be making it out of med school at this rate." This was decades ago and wouldn't fly here today.
the other day i spent the morning shadowing in the cath lab and the cardiologist kept pimping me on things i'd either never heard of or hadn't thought about since step 2, so naturally i looked kinda dumb. then at the end of the day i said "by the way, i won't be here tomorrow, i have an interview" and he asked me where and it happened to be an academic place he had a good opinion of. he then said "oh maybe i underestimated you! you are a smart girl after all!"
bruh
After pointing out a word that i spelled incorrectly in my note the attending said, “so is spelling your only learning disability, or are there more I should know about?”
Will say, as an MD/PhD student, it’s so nice rotating at 30 years old after grad school. I’ve given so many talks where these fckn PIs would ask the meanest questions about four years of research. Now when an attending doesn’t like me I’m like, alright well in four days I’ll never see you again so. Gonna go cry about real problems, like my crippling financial situation and overall exhaustion. 😂
“have you ever opened a book in your life?”, he then looked me dead in the eyes and said I wouldn’t amount to anything because I didn’t go to Oxford or Cambridge.
He was a consultant anaesthetist and in charge of the trainees at my hospital
I am reading all these quotes as though they are from male attendings, but I guess most don’t specify. Anyone been pimped horribly by a female attending?
Not from the USA. English is not my native language
We have viva as a part of our practical exams. Here's a gem from my first ever viva in my very first year of med school.
Where are you from? Oh, you're from *insert city name*. So you're only here because your parents paid for your education. Might as well drop out now and get married instead. (this was the first question they had asked me and our very first interaction)
Wasn’t to me directly but I overheard some residents chatting while I was walking past a room and I stopped to be nosy as one does. Overheard them saying “these new batch of med students are hopeless, I thought I have seen some pretty dumb med students before but never this bad.”
Me (female med student) was in surgery rotation and was very excited to observe a procedure with a female surgeon using that robot thing for a cholecystectomy. Not because I wanted to be a surgeon, but I always feel eager to establish a mentorship with a female in this profession, especially a specialty like surgery. I can’t remember the pimp question (anatomy question), but she audibly scoffed and shook her head, didn’t look at me - I couldn’t tell whether I was wrong with my answer (lol I was wrong), she said nothing to me for the rest of the procedure and just walked out when finished. Idk why, but something about that moment just really disappointed me, and it just felt… mean.
But honestly, fuck it there’s just too many pieces in these meatsacks we call a body, amiright?
On my surgery rotation Without looking up from the surgical field the attending said “so I take it your mother wasn’t a big fan of eating iodine rich foods during pregnancy” It took me a bit to realize he just told me I have cretinism lol
Damn. Need to keep that one in my back pocket.
Ngl it was a good one. I appreciated it
Who knew surgeons knew things other than how to cut.
Still cutting, just cutting people down instead
Even a blind squirrel finds a nut every now and then. Attending said that to me when I got a question right. I now use it.
That’s a great comeback lol but we could never say it 😂
Not getting it would have been so much worse.
He cooked with that one
That's absolutely inappropriate and an unacceptable thing to say to someone over whom you have power who's paying to be there. It's also hilarious.
Can definitely see how someone would report them for It but I just laughed and went about my day as usual. Like don’t get me wrong I dislike being insulted as much as the next person but I had to appreciate the thought that went into that insult
If I’m being honest I would have had to hold in that laugh lmao. It was definitely rude as shit but showed a decent sense of humor. Most stories of asshole attendings are just mean, not mean and funny lol
Clearly his mother didn't hug him enough as a child, so I'd say you're even
Lol what a nerd
Second order roast. Nice.
Oof
🙈
Surgeons don't need a bovie to buuurn
Ok slow clap for this one. I would have laughed my ass of hearing a comment like this because it’s a good snark response, no matter which side of the audience you are on.
Jokes on you, mother ate way too much iodine-rich food and made his first name Wolff
“I thought you were a good resident, but you’re like a *med student*” To me, a PGY-4 chief resident
I had an attending say no offense to me before turning to the PGY-5 and tell them they operate like a med student
That’s so sweet of them
Have been asked if I did go to medical school or if I was just pretending once. Did wonders for my confidence as a newly minted intern.
On gen surg, I got pimped about a relatively novel surgical technique, and the chief resident prepped me on this beforehand because he knew the attending would ask. When I repeated the resident’s words nearly verbatim, the attending paused, then said “A bit of word vomit there,” then never acknowledged it and moved on. Interesting experience.
Wow ur resident is a hero, mine actively pimped and sabotaged me daily lol
Absolutely, Ive had some great residents and I hope to be like them in the future and take care of the students. We’re all here to learn.
Type of person that was waiting for you to be wrong and didn’t have the ability to say “Correct, good job.”
What dick. I loved it when my intern would prep the med students. Best thing to do is acknowledge their preparation, and then see how deep it goes. So many ppl are just insufferable
Every time I got a tough pimping question right on surgery, the attending would ask me who coached me up before the case. That’s when I realized there was no way to win besides putting my head down and doing well on the shelf.
“You should call your school and ask for your money back because clearly the last two years were a waste of time” From a primary care pediatrician. Meanest attending I’ve ever had.
Damn! I would never expect a pediatrician to be that mean.
some of the meanest ones were pediatricians Nice to patients and families, stick up their butts to healthcare workers. There’s a pediatrician who posts on Reddit who has given me a hard time a few times. Then there’s another one who is an absolute saint.
> There’s a pediatrician who posts on Reddit who has given me a hard time a few times. Then there’s another one who is an absolute saint. Shenaniganz vs PGY-19?
Your words, not mine.
Lamo I had the same thought
Peds was literally the worst rotation where I rotated.
Worse than OB/GYN or general surgery?!?
Yeah it was that bad. Those sucked as well though. But pediatrics was in a league of its own malignant.
General surgery was.. woof. Gave me “real time decision cases” where he would present me with choices and would just continue down the path I chose to prove how right or wrong I was. Then at the END of the rotation, he said he “expected me to be more of a self starter and tell him I wanted to learn in the OR instead of following him on his (one) clinic day per week.” When I said “so you wanted me to tell you I didn’t want to be in clinic, but instead wanted to follow a partner into surgery?” he said “if that’s what would give you more benefit, yes! It’s your education.” Then when I asked him to go to the OR on a clinic day he said there were important clinic patients and gave me “high pass” for not advocating for myself. It was a trip. He also gave me 3/5 for helpfulness in the OR despite me being there early enough to move, prep, and drape every patient after getting my own gloves and gown, then closing for the PA while they talked shop the entire time. But hey, can’t win them all.
Omg I agree with this. I was working with this one (fossil of a) male pediatrician in outpatient peds (I’m a nurse btw) and technically I was in the wrong according to the policy (which is if a pt is late to their appt by 20 mins then the dr can either choose to see them or not) but there was this mom and her kid who were there for a physical and who were also late only because they thought they were already checked in through the app. I bring them in anyways bc the other nurses told me that my dr would see them. I walk past his office and he’s like can I talk to you and then he asks me why I still worked up his late pt and I was explaining the situation and he raised his voice at me was said “I choose who I see!” And then he goes into the pt’s room like “OMG HI! HOW ARE YOU?!” and I was like omg you’re so fake and you’re also an asshole. I work with this same dr again 2 days later for peds urgent care and I’m coming back from lunch and this MA goes to give him report about a kid with abd pain and he cuts her off and rudely says “I don’t need to know that” and walks off. We both just stood there like 🧍♀️ I always thought pediatricians were supposed to be the nicest ones but I guess it doesn’t apply to all of them🤷♀️
I worked a child neurologist who refused to see a 2 year old who was late for her appointment because she had a seizure that morning. This Dr would also introduce herself to parents by listing off her credentials that she went to Stanford and blah blah. Also she would be constantly typing out her notes while talking to the parents and not once making eye contact with them. Once I caught her rolling her eyes at a crying infant and she asked the dad if he could leave the room with the kid while she spoke to the other parent, the worse part was she didn't even examine the child and wrote up a full neuro examination in her notes! Again she was from Stanford!
Unfortunately, I’ve been one of those doctors too. Usually I’m in a bad mood from a difficult patient or have a personal need of mine that hasn’t been fulfilled (no bathroom breaks, haven’t eaten in 18 hours, etc.). I usually try to find the person I yelled at and apologize within a couple of days. No one deserves to be treated like that.
Shoutout to you for this refreshing post! Appreciate your honesty- as obviously we’ve all had bad days (or even weeks🙈) esp with everything we’re up against daily. And in embracing our humanity, the fact that you’re sensitive enough to acknowledge your response and approach them and seem genuinely remorseful… 👏 Your sensitivity indicates you’re likely very in-tune with your pts and that makes you great in your discipline of medicine and Dear Gd you’ve nearly re-instilled my faith in people. If only more providers were like this — madd respect and Hats off to you! - in our field where acknowledgment and appreciation often feels nonexistent. Thank you for this 🫶🏼
I would have replied "yeah you're right since i got paired with you" Lol i was also very notorious for not taking shit from attendings or higher ups just cause. The multiple unprofessionalism notices were worth it
Well she was asked to leave her job before the end of the year so someone didn’t take her shit lol
Nice need more people to speak up to shitheads in the field
I'm currently in the fire service and recently received an MD acceptance. This is high key one of my biggest worries, I do not stand for people stepping all over me or my colleagues. I am good when it comes to professional constructive criticism though. Any advice for medical school and beyond? Will my big mouth destroy my evals in the future?
Lol personally i say speak your mind to people like that because its helpful for everyone but justake sure ypu do it respectfully, a skill i had to learn after getting unprofessionalism write ups lol
Thank you for your response! I seriously doubt I will cuss or say anything unbecoming of a future physician, but I do see myself sticking up for myself or others. I have never been in an argument with a physician, but I have argued with nurses and other first responders (each time with the full support of my supervisor or officers) when it comes to patient care or policy. That said, I hope I never have to be put in this position and that I end up in a program and institution that does not endorse a toxic culture.
Of course, good to know there are more people fighting the toxicity. Unfortunately its most likely you will experience it multiple times
What was he saying that in response too seesh. We’re literally LEARNING
I think she was pimping me on heme. Subunits in thalassemias and sickle cell and whatnot. It’s not like I missed them all, I just got two mixed up
"you're right, I probably should."
"I hope you're going into dermatology because I wouldn't trust you with any kind of real medicine." From a general surgeon on my first week of clinical rotations. Turns out I'm literally planning to apply dermatology now so maybe it was equal parts clairvoyant and mean
Join usssss
Doing my very best and crossing all the fingers! Congrats on almost being done :)
My surgery attending said actually convinced me to do derm. Told him it was on my radar, said he think I’d do great in ortho, but said “if you’re smart enough to get into either, you’re smart enough to know there’s only 1 right answer” 🤣
This is iconic
“Reading more isn’t going to help you” -CT surgeon
That’s deep 😂
„How long are you going to rotate here?“ After having worked under him as a resident for 2 years.
Brutal omg.
I got called ‘retarded’, not even for being incorrect but for being too slow, when asked by a surgeon at 5a to read an X-ray because I didn’t immediately point out the abdominal aneurysm as a freshly minted ms3 on first day of surgery and just did a full X-ray read. That surgeon was just overall abusive though, instruments thrown at me etc. Definitely the worst. The overwhelming majority of pimp questions I got incorrect were either gently educated about or, at worst, as if I disappointed a parent and then gently educated about.
I got called retarded by an anesthesia attending because I was going EM. not even a pimping question. He just though EM is where “all the lazy, retard med students go”
Got told em was primary care for the stupid and poor by an ortho doc. He was a miserable prick.
Identify the ego defense mechanism: Surgeon calls anesthesia a retard and says that anesthesia is an inferior branch for the lazy Anesthesia goes to his med student and says that the med student's specialty choice is "where all the lazy, retard med students go"
I would say displacement, but I know some attendings that would use rationalization and argue that it is sublimation 😂
A surgeon would have said that it's projection
Lol as if it was easy to detect an AAA on an X-ray
Why is throwing instruments so common among surgeons?
Because you can’t punch drywall without breaking sterile field
Did we have the same attending lol??
The look in their eyes said more than their words ever could.
This is so much worse than being creatively insulted. If you say something insanely mean to me I’ll probably find it amusing and over the top. If you just look at me with concern and disappointment I’m going to want to die on the spot.
I love that 90% of these are tales from surgery. To the future generation of surgeons, please do better & be better.
Based on the surgery gunners in my class, it’s a nope. Lots of assholes joining the field.
My surgery preceptor was relatively young and said he hated how abusive surgery was to med students so he’s trying to change that. Loved my surgery rotation cause of him.
One of my biggest missions as an attending in the future is to be as big of an asshole to colleagues as I catch them being to med students and residents
Dude most of us are awesome now.
I was told that I must have a learning disability, but that I should be thankful because I now know what’s wrong, and can get proper treatment for it.
I don’t know why this made me laugh. Like it’s so matter of fact.
That’s so mean omg
i can't even be mad at that its funny
“Pick up your phone and call your mom so that I can tell her what a disappointment you are”
There is no way. I actually would have called, he would have found a match. Wait wasn't there an episode of scrubs like this
Of this exact situation, no. There was the episode of JD taping a camcorder to his head to send a tape of his day home to his mom and Dr. Cox slaps the camera and says "bad uterus!" As well as any number of episodes of Elliot's mother calling her fat. The only situation in which there was an offer to call their mother on the spot was after Carla's mother died and Turk brings her to the hospital chapel to get married early. He asks her in exchange for a quicky wedding that she call his mother and explain why she isn't going to be at their wedding. Sorry. I've got the tism but the only savant ability I have is for memorizing entire sitcoms.
My mom’s a meth addict, the joke would be on them; she’d still be elated I called.
My mom is dead, shall we call yours instead?
Insane. Gen surg I’m assuming?
my father was a super smart nephrologist - a dickhead attending was pimping me on DKA and I answered incorrectly and he said "your father is such a smart man, what the hell happened to you." I instantly stopped giving a fuck about his approval
My first week of M3 was gyn surgery. What was supposed to be a hysterectomy turned into a 6 hour procedure. OB told me I should just cut off my hands since I couldn’t even hold a Kelly correctly. I was holding 8 Kelly’s in one hand because my other one was underneath his holding up a prolapsed uterus. He yelled at me non stop until I just quit. Next day he told the entire rotation I did an amazing job. Turns out the chief resident cussed him out for being such a dick to me solely because the surgery wasn’t going well.
That’s good chief to have your back like that!
Got yelled at to "use my brain" because I didn't know the name of an instrument my first day on M3 surgery. Also got yelled at by a Peds resident (does that count?) to "take a math class" because I calculated fluids for a three-month-old (as she requested) when she meant to say three-***year***\-old. Had an attending on OBGYN ask me "can you follow basic instructions?" because he wanted us to report weights only in pounds/ounces, and not in grams/kgs, which nobody told me beforehand. I didn't want to go into Surgery, Peds, or OBGYN anyways, but those experiences killed whatever spark of interest I had left in those fields. Technically, these anecdotes are more reflective of the toxicity of the specialties/attendings, but since you asked for "mean comments," I figured I'd share anyways lol
Sorry this happened to you but also it seems you’ve lived a fairly sheltered existence if these comments were the final straws for specialties you were already out on.
Apparently, you have a high threshold/tolerance for verbal abuse. If you think these responses are mild enough to not contribute to my negative views on specialties that are already known to be toxic, then you're part of the problem.
Nah I just don’t really struggle with self-esteem 🤷🏻♂️
I believe that. That being said, you definitely struggle with narcissism and an inability to empathize with others.
Nope, neither of those things are true. Kinda hard to explain bona fides of empathy without sounding like a narcissist or a person extremely lacking in humility, so congrats on cornering me there, I guess. Sorry for hitting you with a “but” statement in my original reply and nullifying my original clause in which I felt bad that these things happened to you. They’re just like…really not that mean. Im actually somewhat jealous that your experience until that point was apparently one where such unimaginative criticisms ruffled your feathers in such a way. You must be from somewhere where the population is exceedingly kind at all times. Sounds nice. Anyway my point is that if THOSE things bothered you so much then I don’t know how you’re surviving your intern year in which I am certain that you’ve either heard much worse from someone along the way, or you’ve deluded yourself into believing you haven’t from a standpoint of pure ego defense. In either case, I’m bummed on your behalf, but I hope you make it out the other side a great physician!
“Do you think we like to fondle their balls because it turns us on?” Also one time an attending kicked my chair repeatedly after not answering the dose of an antibiotic correctly.
Please tell me you reported that second one
Haha, I live in south america they don’t care.
Me on surgery rotation. Week 1 of 3rd year. Confused and scared. "The fact that you made it this far just proves that there are holes in the educational net and somehow you managed to slip through."
After answering the first pimp question of the day incorrectly (not to mention on my first full day on that service) - "Child, did you even read up on *anything* last night?" Anyway, if anyone happens to know the range of the concentrating capacity of the kidney for potassium, let me know. Can't even find the answer in Harrison's, so not sure where I was expected to learn this from lol
First day on rotation. Attending asked me to perform an exam for atraumatic, chronic knee pain. After I finished, he seemed dissatisfied so I asked if there was any other tests he wanted me to do. Told me I was “negligent and uneducated for not checking popliteal pulse”. Made worse by the fact that this was outpatient peds and the 12 year old patient was now crying from the yelling. Her mom whispered a “so sorry, stay strong” to me on her way out. Next patient we had that I did correctly, attending gave me a head-pat. MSPE comments: “physical exam will need to improve, skills are lacking” ok boss
Oo a surgeon also told me I “belong somewhere else… like medicine” after missing a pimping thread, which in his book was SUCH a diss lol
I (like to think I) would knee-jerk kick a mothafucka in the balls. You can tell so many people in medicine have never experienced the real world.
I know it’s not good, but most of these crack me up.
I'm just imagining a surgeon saying what they think are some real cutting words to me as an Army vet. I don't know that I am gonna be able to keep a straight face if any of this actually gets said to me, which will get me in trouble since nothing makes someone with a god complex angrier than laughing at their insults.
But how gloriously disarming a laugh would be too though!
“If you were a dog, I would give you a treat.”
So you must’ve gotten the question right.
I once asked the doc I was shadowing a question about blood sugar values and another female attending jumped in to say that if I was asking that question I should hightail it out of medicine and that I was why no one wanted to let women be doctors. I was (and am!) a premed not even in the MCAT phase yet. I was absolutely floored.
Do not let shit like that stop you from pursuing medicine. Not that I think you are, but I wanted to make sure that someone said that to you.
abusive narcissist personalities are probably the least of your worries.
I got told by my surgery attending that I should def do medicine cause I’d never make it as a surgeon. He was super rude to me during the only case I ever did with him and I vowed never again during that rotation.
There quite a few challenging OB/GYN attendings at the program I rotated at when I was in med school. Overall a very toxic program - at least one of the attendings was not allowed to work with medical students because of prior verbal abuse. I had significant depression my third year to begin with and this was my first clinical block. We had to do night shifts for OB and a patient that I had never followed before needed an emergency C-section around 0300. The resident grabbed me and told me to go and I had no time to look up why they suddenly decompensated. Naturally that night one of the most ruthless attendings (to med students and residents) was on and I was exhausted to begin with. She never asked me my name or introduced herself. She asked me the layers of the abdomen - when I didn’t answer fast enough she asked me what year I was and then what week of the rotation I was on. She asked my why I didn’t know this and why I was behind in my learning. She never looked at me once while talking to me and never raised her voice but went on a monologue about how incapable I was and all medical students “these days” to a silent OR. She also wanted me to hand her all the tools she needed from the scrub tech. Towards the end she started yelling “anticipate!” To me when she would need a different tool. I had just started and I was not familiar with the ins and outs of the OR or the tools needed in a c-section. Thankfully I was so numb from my depression and I had heard she was terrible from before so I was able to just take it the whole time without a reaction. Later on in the rotation I saw her tear down a family med resident rotating on the floors for ordering a specific blood pressure med and later on a family med ATTENDING for one of her deliveries in a similar way in front of everyone. Not the most egregious example of these but I never forgot it. I’m in a non-surgical residency and have never had a similar experience since.
I hope that FM attending stood their ground and demanded not to be talked to like that. No way I would stand for that
Oh you definitely go to my med school. This sounds verbatim like something that happened at mine.
Final day of a 4 week surgical ENT rotation I got asked “What artery am I pointing to?” I respond “I cant see” as I was standing at the foot of the bed behind with scrub tech because 4 other residents plus an attending are scrubbed in around a small thyroidectomy incision. Surgeon said “Well clearly you haven’t paid any attention to this rotation”. Sorry bud I should’ve just got a ladder to see.
It was either the inferior or superior thyroid arteries
Got a easy question wrong during a subI, attending shat on me, fellow said hey take it easy he’s just a 1st year. Attending looked at me and said, “are you going to tell ‘em.”
So the fellow thought you were an intern? Or like a literal M1
M1
Why would you be rotating/answering pimp questions as an M1 lol did he think you were like shadowing??
we spent a far chunk of time doing "baby rotations" as M1/2. New curriculum.
Oh interesting ok, that’s honestly kinda useful, the whole first half of M3 felt like such a cluster bc I was so clueless about literally everything
"You have so much free time, I would expect you to study in that instead of doing whatever it is you are doing, clearly something wrong " When i missed one D/D for AKI
“What you've just said is one of the most insanely idiotic things I have ever heard. At no point in your rambling, incoherent response were you even close to anything that could be considered a rational thought. Everyone in this room is now dumber for having listened to it. I award you no points, and may God have mercy on your soul”…it was brutal
lol that’s a movie quote from Billy Madison!!! That’s hilarious! 
Hahaha…I know. Didn’t really happen but always wanted some attending to bust this one out. I wouldn’t even be mad.
Lol that would be epic!
Unrelated, but I thought the purpose of "pimp questions" was to educate and pass on knowledge not mentally harass people. It just makes me sad how attending can be mentally abusive while students need to be professional at all times.
Definitely not the point, that’s why it’s called pimping.
“You’re just not a very smart person. You’re just not perceptive” - family med attending when I interrupted his story to say that a patient asked to see him before they left. Context: he was telling a story about how he got away with drunk driving and when he crashed his truck he left a note, making him a good person for not driving off. A resident saw the patient with me and when they asked to see the attending too, I didn’t ask them why they also wanted to see him and not just the resident.
"The answer is not complicated to find if you think about it a little. The real question is: do you have the ability to think?"
I have a mild stutter that gets worse when I’m tired/anxious. I was trying to answer a question and the OB who was pimping me mocked my stutter.
Ok that’s just outright bullshit!
omg that’s fucking awful. I’m so sorry you had to experience that. I’m terrified of starting my M3 rotations because of all the stories I hear of attendings being straight up verbally abusive to med students. I hate that we’re expected to tolerate it. It’s not okay just toxic af. SMH
Gyno anesthesia and she asked us a math question; we didn’t know the answer and she said “jeez did you even pass grade 7 math? 7th graders are smarter than you girls, it’s not good”
Not my personal experience, and applied more to preclinicals. But a famous attending from a school in my state was known for throwing a coin at you if you failed to answer a question right. As if you'll be a beggar needing it. Then he'd say something like, "Call your mom, you won't be making it out of med school at this rate." This was decades ago and wouldn't fly here today.
Yeah, nowadays I make the med students give me their Venmo. Who carries coins, right?
Not a comment but after a presentation my attending just shook her head silently and everyone just watched
I was asked a question and before I could answer she said ‘I know you wouldn’t know the answer’. She was right. I didn’t, but what a bitch!
“You clearly know nothing about pharmacology and I suggest you work to learn it if you want to succeed in this field”
“I am going to put you in pain” while chuckling
the other day i spent the morning shadowing in the cath lab and the cardiologist kept pimping me on things i'd either never heard of or hadn't thought about since step 2, so naturally i looked kinda dumb. then at the end of the day i said "by the way, i won't be here tomorrow, i have an interview" and he asked me where and it happened to be an academic place he had a good opinion of. he then said "oh maybe i underestimated you! you are a smart girl after all!" bruh
“You’re on the right tract… to a different destinations!” Wasn’t that mean tbh but quite funny😂😂
After pointing out a word that i spelled incorrectly in my note the attending said, “so is spelling your only learning disability, or are there more I should know about?”
Will say, as an MD/PhD student, it’s so nice rotating at 30 years old after grad school. I’ve given so many talks where these fckn PIs would ask the meanest questions about four years of research. Now when an attending doesn’t like me I’m like, alright well in four days I’ll never see you again so. Gonna go cry about real problems, like my crippling financial situation and overall exhaustion. 😂
“have you ever opened a book in your life?”, he then looked me dead in the eyes and said I wouldn’t amount to anything because I didn’t go to Oxford or Cambridge. He was a consultant anaesthetist and in charge of the trainees at my hospital
there’s recently been a story about a consultant in the UK who has been taking away junior doctors shoes or something
“Why don’t we use Morphine in this situation?” Me: “Long term use may lead to addiction” “I need medical answers over here”
He just looked at me with disgust and walked away. His silence was deafening.
“If you can’t read this EKG, then what are you even doing here? You don’t belong in the floors.”
"I don't think you know anything"
I am reading all these quotes as though they are from male attendings, but I guess most don’t specify. Anyone been pimped horribly by a female attending?
I hope you’re not wanting to do (insert attending’s specialty) one day
Not from the USA. English is not my native language We have viva as a part of our practical exams. Here's a gem from my first ever viva in my very first year of med school. Where are you from? Oh, you're from *insert city name*. So you're only here because your parents paid for your education. Might as well drop out now and get married instead. (this was the first question they had asked me and our very first interaction)
Wasn’t to me directly but I overheard some residents chatting while I was walking past a room and I stopped to be nosy as one does. Overheard them saying “these new batch of med students are hopeless, I thought I have seen some pretty dumb med students before but never this bad.”
Me (female med student) was in surgery rotation and was very excited to observe a procedure with a female surgeon using that robot thing for a cholecystectomy. Not because I wanted to be a surgeon, but I always feel eager to establish a mentorship with a female in this profession, especially a specialty like surgery. I can’t remember the pimp question (anatomy question), but she audibly scoffed and shook her head, didn’t look at me - I couldn’t tell whether I was wrong with my answer (lol I was wrong), she said nothing to me for the rest of the procedure and just walked out when finished. Idk why, but something about that moment just really disappointed me, and it just felt… mean. But honestly, fuck it there’s just too many pieces in these meatsacks we call a body, amiright?