For those of you who don’t know, PIMPING is a legitimate term used in the medical field, and is defined as a time when a attending physician (the Pimper) poses a series of very difficult questions to the student (the Pimpee). It’s a term that had been popularized by Dr.Brancati in his classic 1989 article “The Art of Pimping”. Those who are not in medicine may not appreciate the degree of distress in which pimping may cause among medical students. Nevertheless, each medical student eventually finds his/her own unique way of dealing with it. Some embrace it, some (the all-stars) thrive on it, some have evasive tendencies and avoid being picked on at all cost, and some are simply hopeless.
Just last year, Dr.Detsky published an article also titled “The Art of Pimping” in the Journal of American Medical Association to revist this deadly art that is so pervasive and ingrained in the culture of medical education. In the article, he offers advice for both the pimper and the pimpee on how to deal with each other. In my opinion, medical literature doesn't get any better than this :)
