Buzzword Hell

Hoover  3 Mar, 2007  Medical School

There’s something about all of the buzzwords that you learn during medical school. Most of them kind of piss me off, so let’s highlight a few.

Fund of Knowledge

I got so sick of hearing this, especially on evaluations. It makes it even better when you don’t give two shits about your fund of knowledge.

Hoover’s fund of knowledge is equivalent to that of a freshman medical student.

Yeah, bite my ass.

The Wards

I know I use this as a category for this blog. It still sucks, though. What the fuck are the wards anyway?

How did you do during your junior rotations on the wards?

It’s a hospital. This isn’t 1940, jackass.

Rounds

God, do I ever hate this buzzword. My day used to begin when it was time to do rounds. It just got worse from that point forward. I think the word was derived from back when doctors still tasted piss to test for diabetes. Not much has changed.

What time do we round today?

Rounding is for idiots.

The Whiff Test

Who the fuck is responsible for this crap? This stems back from the early days of medicine, no doubt. Since the wet mount, KOH prep with microscopic analysis, and vaginal pH isn’t enough to reveal a diagnosis we have to smell the nasty shit too.

Do you want to smell this vaginal discharge? She’s got bacterial vaginosis! C’mon, check out this whiff test!

No thanks.

Shelf Exam

Am I the only one wondering about this gem? Not once did I ever see the exams sitting on a shelf. If I was to see them on the shelf, I would probably snatch one up and look at it ahead of time.

Are you ready for the surgery shelf exam?

The NBME can blow me.

Rotations

Answers.com defines the word rotation (under the medical section) as

  1. The act or process of turning around a center or an axis.
  2. Regular and uniform variation in a sequence or series, as in the recurrence of symptoms of a disease.

Nowhere does it mention spending a month in some shitty hospital somewhere while you fetch coffee for residents.

How did you do on your surgery rotation? Wow, my peds rotation was the best! I just love kids!

I’m right and the medical school is wrong.

Pimping

You guys should know what pimping is. If not, be sure to check this out. The last time I checked, pimping involved hookers, money, and blow.

Did you hear about how much Dr. Imanass pimps? He’s the pimp king!

Pimping is for losers.

Chief

The chief, whether it be a resident or attending faculty, essentially tells everyone else what to do.

Dr. Getalife is the chief resident on your OB/GYN rotation.

The Native Americans are going to sue.

Medical School Buzzwords

There you have it guys, some of the buzzwords that pissed me off as a medical student. I probably left off a bunch and if I think of others I’ll draft up another post.

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13 Comments so far »

  1. exi said

    March 3 2007 @ 4:19 pm

    Not a medical student, but I’ve seen a lot of bitching over “professionalism” over at SDN. :)

  2. Hoover said

    March 3 2007 @ 4:27 pm

    Ahh, that’s a good one exi. It completely slipped my mind. I’ll have to add that one for the next round of buzzwords.

  3. Cherokee said

    March 3 2007 @ 9:41 pm

    Excellent post.

  4. TJD said

    March 3 2007 @ 11:40 pm

    Another buzzword on about the same level as professionalism….. empathy. The word makes me cringe.

  5. Hoover said

    March 4 2007 @ 2:54 am

    Haha, empathy. Great buzzword, I’ll add it to the list.

  6. CobraCommander said

    March 4 2007 @ 2:12 pm

    Man, you could write quite a bit about the moronic euphemisms used in medical education:
    -Presenting the patient: Fancy way of saying “tell me about him”. When your car needs work, do you “present” it to the mechanic, or do you tell him what’s wrong? And that stupid, stilted way they tell you to present (Mr. So-and-so is an (age) year old (race) male etc etc.) drives me crazy. Nobody talks like that unless they’re forceed to.

    -”Male” or “female” to refer to patients during presentation (what happened to man, woman, lady?) Male and female make it sound like you’re talking about livestock.

    -Grand rounds: Basically a literature review and presentation of a topic. I guess they have to use this one because “presentation” is already taken.

    The list goes on and on.

  7. Zuwie said

    March 4 2007 @ 10:49 pm

    At my med school they “emphasize self-directed learning”. Translation: we’re too busy to teach you.

  8. Hoover said

    March 4 2007 @ 11:37 pm

    Haha Zuwie. Isn’t it funny how part of the salary of the professors includes teaching, yet they throw textbooks at you all day and tell you to figure it out on your own?

    Hell, we could’ve gotten our medical education for a couple thousand bucks at Amazon.com.

    Cobra - great name BTW. I absolutely LOVED GI Joe as a kid. You’re right man, you could probably dedicate an entire site to doing nothing but dissecting the various buzzwords that are force fed to you during medical school. My favorite that you listed is “Grand Rounds.” My definition of Grand Rounds is me sitting in the auditorium and catching up on sleep.

  9. The Lone Coyote said

    March 5 2007 @ 7:50 pm

    Your blog is awesome.

    Here are a few more that drive me nuts:

    “Evaluations” and “Feedback” - Why don’t they just call it what it is: GRADING. Maybe they can’t call it that since grading implies something somewhat objective and that is clearly not the case on “the wards.”

    “GI Rounds” - People use this all the time when talking about having a meal. “Page the team and let’s go to the cafeteria for GI Rounds.” Whatever.

    Another great one used at my school - “systems-based learning.” It made a little more sense 2nd year, but now that we’re in the hospital it makes no sense to be “evaluated” on this. Last time I checked patients were people and not just a collection of “systems.”

  10. Hoover said

    March 5 2007 @ 8:13 pm

    Great buzzwords Coyote, and thanks for the compliments on the blog!. With all of the recommendations on this post, I might have enough to publish another rant again.

    Thanks for the suggestions guys, and keep them coming.

  11. Panda Bear said

    March 6 2007 @ 10:01 pm

    “Core Competencies”

    Translation: Goofy definitions of things that you should be doing anyways that nobody ever thought it necessary to catergorize until we all became a bunch of over-managed pussies.

    “Metrics”

    Translation: Useless statistics that mean nothing, have no bearing on patient care, and only serve to suck up even more of our valuable time.

  12. Hoover said

    March 6 2007 @ 10:16 pm

    Great translations Panda. You and I see eye-to-eye on a lot of stuff.

    =)

  13. Online Electronics Store said

    March 10 2007 @ 10:06 pm

    Random Rants…

    […] Later on I learned that this wasn’t exactly true. […]…

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