Sunday, October 28, 2012

Playing smart

There was a resident I worked with who would always ask some hyper-intellectual question during lecture. Like: "You say that Intervention X didn't work, but a study done in 1998 showed that Intervention X was effective in at least three quarters of men over age 50."

And you're like, "Guh?" And you're all impressed that he could just randomly recite studies on seemingly any topic. You think he's definitely the most knowledgeable of all the residents.

However, if you asked him a directed question where there is one right answer, you discover that he actually didn't know some extremely basic things.

It's amazing how good some people are pretending to be smart.

9 comments:

  1. And those are the ones who somehow end up being more successful (and richer) than the rest of us. It's infuriating.

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  2. Academic medicine seems to reward this type of behavior. Knowledge of studies and esoteric facts gets one further than knowing straight-forward, day-to-day medical info that helps actually take care of patients.

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  3. There's one of those in every program :-)

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  4. I'm scared that's going to be me. Random bits of information and REALLY big picture information stick really well in my mind, but I have no idea how to help real patients :(

    Hopefully rotations will help fix that!

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  5. When I see students asking these types of questions I always wonder if the professor can tell that they already had background info and are just trying to show off or if they think they are so smart they can zero in on the minor discrepancies. I saw a professor will call them out on it one time. Funniest thing ever :-)

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  6. I'd rather know my basic stuff...

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  7. Ha, totally have one of those students in my class, can list random pharmacological studies but wouldn't know where the quadriceps muscles inserted :)

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  8. the basics are the most important ones! and I am guilty of constantly forgetting about this fact.

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  9. Oh so very true!!

    PS: Do we NEED word verification? :( The stupid images are really difficult to get!

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