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During the trial of a man from Florida who posed as a physician’s assistant, the prosecutor told the jury that the defendant in the case went so far as to wear scrubs and a stethoscope while performing the act. The defendant in the case, Matthew Scheidt, was doing one of two things; he was a con playing the part of a doctor or he was simply overzealous and interested in medicine.
Scheidt was brought into custody on September 2, 2011 after posing at Osceola Regional Medical Center in Kissimmee, Florida as a physician’s assistant.
“[Scheidt] Dressed in scrubs, stethoscope around his neck… he even had the terminology down,” prosecutor Sarah Freeman said during the trial.
The defense attorney, Jamie Kane, blamed the administrators at the hospital for the mistake, claiming that the defendant was given a badge used by physician’s assistants before they checked the credentials of Scheidt. A human resource employee from the hospital, Edith Silva, said on the stand that she did not verify if Scheidt was a physician’s assistant “because the office was very busy.”
The attorney for Scheidt said that he did not lie and that he even told people who asked him that he was a student. The prosecution used witnesses that said the defendant acted and played the part of a professional on the job.
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“I walked into the room and observed Mr. Scheidt, stethoscope to a patient’s chest, listening to breath sounds,” said Devin Mone. Mone works as an ER physician’s assistant. “And he had an IV catheter in his hand.”
When Scheidt was 17 he was working as a clerk for a doctor located across the street from the Osceola Regional Medical Center. When Scheidt was arrested, he informed police officers that he was issued the wrong identification by the hospital. He repeatedly blamed the hospital when talking with police. He even told police during interrogation that he was asked by a doctor to perform CPR on a patient who overdosed.
“He said, ‘Can you take over CPR?'” Scheidt said. “I started doing CPR for a minute, two minutes, while he went to get medications and came back in. That was it. I swear to God I did not do nothing. … I felt so uncomfortable even doing that. And, you know, the only reason why I did do it was because there was nobody else in there. And I’m not going to let her die,” he said.
If convicted, Scheidt could be sentenced to 25 years in prison on the charges of practicing medicine without a license, impersonating a physician’s assistant and performing CPR on an overdosing patient.
