A teenager has been arrested on felony charges of masquerading as a physician's assistant in the Osceola Regional Medical Center's emergency room, Kissimmee police said.
Matthew Scheidt, 17, was picked up Friday after hospital officials called police earlier this week about suspicions that he was an impostor, police said.
While working in the busy emergency room, Scheidt performed CPR on a patient in cardiac arrest, performed physical examinations and other forms of care to an undisclosed number of unsuspecting patients, an arrest report said.
Scheidt obtained hospital credentials by claiming to be a physician's assistant in a program at Nova Southeastern University, records show.
He apparently knew the hospital from working as a part-time billing clerk for a local group of surgeons. When Scheidt applied for a hospital identification badge on Aug. 24, he told the personnel office he worked as a P.A. for Surgical Management Group and needed a new badge because the surgical practice had changed its name to Osceola Surgical Associates, the arrest report states.
In the days that followed, Scheidt returned at least twice to request a full-access badge that would let him use the doctors' lounge as well as restricted areas of the hospital, according to the report.
When the office manager for the surgical group confronted Scheidt earlier this week, the teenager claimed to be a deputy sheriff working in the emergency room on an undercover investigation so "top secret" the agency would not verify his employment, the report said.
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