10 Med School Terms

Hi everyone, and welcome to Medical Mondays! I just took my very last shelf exam (hooray hooray!) and finished my last rotation for third year on Friday…so in celebration, this week’s topic is just for fun = 10 Med School Terms!

Please note that these are just for fun, and should in no way be taken as legitimate science/medicine/anything related to either of the two!

That’s actually me in the background, getting pranked by the school librarian and skeleton, Mr. Bones.

Pimping

Not to be confused with the other definition, this is used to describe when an attending singles out a med student (or resident) and tests their knowledge by asking an onslaught of difficult questions, often in front of many others.

I dread this sort of thing, but thankfully escaped unscathed all through third-year–my preceptors would ask me questions, but they never made me feel like I had no brain (except my psych preceptor, but I don’t think he had any malicious intent). I’m somewhat worried now that since I’m not at all used to being pimped, I’m going to fail at life on my audition rotations. :x

Banana Bag

A bag of IV fluids with thiamine, folic acid, multivitamin for infusion, and magnesium sulfate, used to restore nutritional deficiencies (most often in alcoholics, to prevent Wernicke-Korsakoff syndrome).

The multivitamin solution has a yellow-ish color, hence the name, “banana bag!”

Eiffel Syndrome / “I Fell On It”

The universal explanation given by a patient presenting with a foreign object in the rectum.

White Coat Ninja

This one may or may not be unique to our hospital, but it’s the practice of knowing all the right stairwells/hallways (avoid the elevator) to take, and how to effectively melt into the walls in order to avoid certain attendings/nurses/etc. from saddling you with work that is not your responsibility, or within your scope of your knowledge.

Technically, our hospital’s pretty small, so it only has about 3 different stairwells, so…all the more reason to hone your practice! :P

Poopshake

As far as I know, this is unique to our hospital (+ maybe just one of our attendings), and is a play on the fecal transplant. (You probably don’t want to know, but here’s a satirical article about it. I <3 Gomerblog.)

We use it as a term for when someone wakes up an extremely difficult (e.g. drug-seeking and/or full of all the most unreasonable complaints in the world) patient who’s finally, finally fallen asleep–somewhat akin to poking a sleeping bear. (Why would you do this!?)

“Bad poopshake, bad!”

Joking around with my DIT instructors on twitter has been making the studying a little less painful.

Frequent Flyer

Someone who spends a lot of time in the ER and/or hospital, either due to being chronically ill, making repeatedly terrible lifestyle choices, and/or drug-seeking. This patient is likely on a first-name basis with most of the doctors/nurses.

SOCMOB (Standing On the Corner, Minding Own Business)

Perhaps also known as one of the most dangerous things you can possibly do, as it appears to be the history given by 90%+ gunshot victims/patients who have been assaulted.

Walkie Talkie

The patient walks and talks.

Gunner

A student who’s hell-bent on looking good in front of faculty + proving his/her superiority over the rest of the class. This student would not think twice about sabotaging others to get to the top, and is usually universally disliked by the class/faculty alike..

Zebra

“Common things are common. When you hear hoofbeats, think horses, not zebras.”

A zebra refers to a rare, strange, or unexpected diagnosis, which is what medical students tend to zero in on, because they spend the first two years drilling us on those.

• Do you have any random/funny/weird slang that you use in your profession?
• Any weird ones that you’ve heard in the medical field that I didn’t cover? :P