Matthew Scheidt was arrested Friday, accused of impersonating a physician's assistant for five days at a central Florida hospital.
According to police, the untrained teen spent time in the operating room and emergency room, where he conducted exams, provided patient care and accessed restricted patient information.
It all started on Aug. 24, when Scheidt allegedly went to the human resources office at the Osceola Regional Medical Center and requested a new hospital badge, according to the police report.
He allegedly said he was a physician's assistant in a program at Nova Southeastern University and he needed to replace his old badge, which had out of date information. Police said that though he gave two different explanations to two different people in the HR department, he was given a badge with his name and picture, stating that he was a P.A.
That week, Scheidt repeatedly presented himself as a P.A. in the emergency room, according to police.
Physicians on duty told the police Scheidt wore scrubs, a lab coat and his badge, and helped restrain a combative patient, cleaned and dressed wounds and removed an IV for a patient who was being discharged.
Scheidt also performed patient interviews and physical exams on disrobed male patients and accessed patient charts with personal and medical information, the police report said.
On just his second night as a "physician's assistant," he allegedly did chest compressions for about five minutes on a patient in cardiac arrest.
He told hospital staff he was 23 years old, claimed his mother was an executive with the corporation that owns the hospital and bragged he had been deputized with the Osceola County Sheriff's Office, the police report said.
Scheidt allegedly played doctor for six days before emergency room staff contacted human resources because they thought there was something suspicious about him, police said. The ER staff began questioning his qualifications when he continually requested access to restricted areas of the hospital, according to the report.
The HR department contacted the Surgical Management Group, where Scheidt said he was a P.A., and found that though the teen worked there, it was as a part-time billing clerk, not a P.A. Scheidt was fired from that job and had to return his P.A. ID card.