BREAKING: Male Patient Mistakes Black Female Physician for Nurse and White CPR Mannequin for Doctor
Max Splainington, a 71-year-old patient admitted for chest pain to Gregorio Hospital’s emergency department, found himself in an awkward situation yesterday morning when he misidentified the members of his healthcare team. The retired insurance broker mistook Dr. Katie Stryker, a black emergency medicine physician, for his nurse and a nearby white CPR mannequin for his doctor.
Dr. Stryker recalled the encounter explaining that Mr. Splainington was asleep in his bed when she walked behind his curtain wearing her “Dr. Katherine Stryker M.D.” embroidered white coat, her five ID badges and her stethoscope. “He immediately woke up, looked at me and greeted me with an, ‘Oh hello nurse! Is the doc coming soon?’,” she recounted.
After inappropriately greeting Dr. Stryker, Mr. Splainington then reportedly looked around the room and saw a white colored mannequin lying on the floor near his bed which had been left there after a lunchtime resident training session. “Once he saw the white mannequin, he waved at it with a friendly ‘oh almost didn’t see you down there doctor sir’,”explained Dr. Stryker. “It wasn’t even like a full body mannequin; it was just a limbless torso and head”.
Once he learnt the truth, after Dr. Stryker spent half an hour explaining that the whitest thing in his room wasn’t his doctor, Mr. Splainington immediately apologized to both the mannequin and Dr. Stryker, in that order.
Dr. Stryker explained that this wasn’t the first time she’s been mistaken for a nurse over her 26-year-long career as an well-respected emergency medicine physician. “It really grinds my gears that when some closed-minded patients see a woman of color working in a hospital they automatically assume she can’t be a doctor.”
The mannequin was not sentient to comment on the events of yesterday.
“I just come from a very different era when things were a lot different, but I agree it’s time for me to get with the program,” explained Mr. Splainington. “That said, everyone is painting this picture of me as a closed-minded, prejudiced buffoon, but one could argue I’m actually the most open-minded for believing that a naked, legless, armless, eyeless torso person could make it as a doctor.” He later retracted these statements.
This isn’t the first time Mr. Splainington has misidentified a female physician of color for a nurse at Gregorio Hospital. Last year when receiving his colonoscopy, Mr. Splainington mistook his gastroenterologist Dr. Megahana Ballajerla for the receptionist. He believed that his actual gastroenterologist was a medical diagram on a nearby wall of a Caucasian male with an exposed digestive tract.
