I have been investigating both advanced practice nursing and medical training, and I get a bad feeling about medical training. I've mentioned attitude problems I've caught from doctors and medical students before, but now it's time to address one specific topic.
They say that in medical school, "pimping" is a common thing. Apparently there are two main types, each of which begins with a medical practitioner who is serving in the capacity of an instructor firing off a series of questions at a student or resident. The "beneficial" type is where the questions are legitimately related to something the student or resident should know because he/she will need to use it in practice, and if the student / resident gets to the point of saying "I don't know", the instructor will tell the student to look it up and perhaps do a brief presentation on it the next day they're together.
For the record, I consider this entirely acceptable. I teach (though not in a school) and I do the same thing to my students sometimes.
The second type is "malicious", where the point of the questioning is to humiliate and embarrass the student. As I've read, the questioning may or may not deal with relevant topics, but in either case when the student / resident reaches that "I don't know" point, the instructor will mock the person in front of his/her peers for not having that knowledge.
What makes it worse is that they seem to think that this is acceptable practice and that people should not rise up to stop it. (I suggested that they could rise up en masse to stop it if they wanted to, and some of them mocked me for that!!) Personally, I see no benefit in the mocking / humiliation / whatever you'd call it, because all that does is bring people down with no counterbalancing benefit.
So my question is: In nursing education, considering all levels from LPN up to DNP, how prevalent is the "malicious" form of "pimping"? And, if it happens at all, what is the likelihood of retaliation against someone who either returns fire at that moment (so as to save face if nothing else) or reports the abuse to the administration of the school or facility?
