Have you ever been mistaken for a doctor?

[ThePrincessBride]

So, I have heard some stories of female doctors being mistaken for nurses...so I was wondering this: have you, as a male nurse, been mistaken for a doctor?

[zzrider]

Heck, I'm just an EMT who works as a tech in a hospital ER, and half the time the patients think I'm the doctor.

[kalevra, BSN, RN]

I had some Spanish speaking family members of a patient refer to me as "medico". At the time i thought it was like saying medic like a med tech or emt. Found out later it means physician or medical student. The patient was discharged before I had a chance to correct their family.

[ceej]

I used to work as a phlebotomist at a city hospital. I probably got called "doctor" or "are you training to be a doctor" or "are you a med student" at least once a day. Especially if I was working on the floors (as opposed to the clinic).

I'm also quite young looking so I often heard "are you old enough to be doing this?". If they seemed like someone who could take a joke I would often say "yes, but I actually need to get going after we are done, recess is almost over and I'm due back at school".

[Pacs, RN]

YES!!!!!

The funny thing is, it's not just at work. Even outside hospital settings, people I know still refer to me as "Doctor"

[Positive Attitude]

A million times, especially since I've been out of uniform!

Sometimes it's helpful if a patient is disoriented: they sometimes take more notice of a "doctor" than a nurse!!

[EMT-newbie]

This should be combined with the "male nurses with beards" thread, I wager you'd get a really high correlation between +beards and +doctor recognition hits on that study =)

[Vinniesguy]

I used to work in aged care facility in England. Quite often the female nurses would ask me to pretend to a doctor in order together confused residents to take their meds!

[Hidden_Identity]

experienced it before when im doing my hospital RLE (related learning experience) in one of the government hospital here....an old lady keep on saying "doc i have this and i have that...etc"....then i keep on saying too "I'm not a doctor Mam"....maybe because im wearing white uniform and stethos in hand thats why she think i'm a doctor....

[NP Joel]

All the time unfortunately.

[brainkandy87]

Yup, happens all the time, especially if I go in to help a female nurse with a pt. Usually I'll say the female nurse is the Doc, just to throw her and the pt off.

[jimthorp]

Yep, happens all the time :icon_roll

[ChuckeRN, BSN, RN]

My patients call me "Doc" all the time. Of course where I work, - a State Prison - the term is a sign of respect and not my title.