A boy; a lab coat; a lie. The “Orlando Sentinel” broke the story: “Seventeen-year-old Matthew Scheidt was arrested last Friday for impersonating a physician assistant and actually examining patients at the Osceola Regional Medical Center ER.”

The most mind-boggling piece of this puzzle (at least for me), is not the fact that this teenager impersonated someone within the physician services sector, but that he actually provided patient care to a number of people in the hospital’s emergency department.

The “Sentinel” and “TIME” (magazine) reported that “during his rounds Matthew Scheidt interviewed patients, read through confidential medical records, performed physical exams on disrobed male patients, cleaned wounds, restrained a combative patient and performed CPR on a patient in cardiac arrest.”

According to a number of media outlets, the boy, who is the son of an actual physician, said that he was 23 and “affiliated with a program at South Florida’s Nova Southeastern University.”

I cannot put in to words how disturbing it is to know that this actually happened in my own backyard, not less in an American hospital.

In my opinion, “TIME” correspondent Megan Gibson summed it up quite nicely.

“Fortunately it looks like playtime’s over for Scheidt; he’s being charged with five counts of impersonation,” said Gibson.