“Ladies and gentlemen, we have a medical emergency. Is there a doctor on the plane?” How many times have we heard the phrase in TV and movies? And how many times have you actually had it happen on your flight?

If we were to believe statistics, it doesn’t happen very often. A recent study by researchers at Duke University School of Medicine found that medical emergencies happen on one in 212 commercial flights. In 8% of those, the patients had to be taken to the hospital as soon as the plane landed, and in 1.7% of cases, the pilot had to divert the plane.

But medical emergencies happen in all sorts of public places. And we’d bet that many doctors and their family members have good tales to tell about people asking for help on the streets. So, we’ve picked the craziest and funniest answers from an online thread where one netizen asked: “Doctors, what is your best ‘Is anyone here a doctor?!’ story?”

#1

In my towns school district our superintendent of schools demands that he be addressed by doctor(then last name). He does have his PhD, but even if you mistakenly call him superintendent(then last name) he will say “Dr.”..really pompous and in your face about it. In the town it is an ongoing inside joke that everyone talks about because of his insistence, well last 4th of July our towns parade was going on and it was blistering hot, while the procession is passing by a lady faints from the heat about 10 ft from him. Someone yells for a Dr. and I swear to god all the people in ear shot who were victims of his name aggression came out of the woodwork pointing at him saying” He’s a Dr…..He’s a Dr”…he absolutely froze with the deer in the headlights look and turn and speed walked away…..after that incident he was ok with Superintendent(then last name)…

© Photo: I-use-to-be-cool

#2

College Halloween party and some kid passed out from what I heard was a combo of a bunch of Xanax and liquor. Everyone at the party found the guy dressed as a doctor who had a stethoscope to check if he was breathing.

© Photo: kennymakaha

#3

OK – this happened not to me but to my boss a number of years ago when I was a post-doc. He was a prostate cancer surgeon, and a good one. We were taking a flight to a conference on prostate cancer, and someone on the plane had a heart attack. They did the whole “is there a doctor in the plane” thing, and he came forward. I saw the look on his face, because W*F are you going to do at 30,000 ft with no equipment, also you specialize in another whole part of the body? He checked the guy, confirmed the problem, had him take his heart pills, and had them land the plane. The guy survived, but really, calling for a doctor under a lot of those situations isn’t much use beyond basic help and diagnosis. They don’t carry stimpacks with them under normal circumstances.

© Photo: IamDDT

#4

My wife was on a plane and they asked for a doctor, she is an eye doctor and I kept telling her to volunteer, she refused until she found out it was actually an eye injury.

© Photo: np206100

#5

I am not the doctor; my wife is. We weren’t married then. This was in our first few months of dating.

I work in the entertainment industry, and we were at a pre-release screening of 127 Hours aka the James-Franco-saws-off-his-own-hand movie. I wasn’t super excited about seeing it, but I was hosting a q&a with the director after the film, and looked forward to impressing my date with how cool I was, getting to do this onstage interview.

So the movie, it turns out, is pretty good. And the money scene where Franco gets to hacking at himself was pretty effectively harrowing. Maybe too much so. As the scene unfolds, there are gasps around the crowd. Suddenly across the aisle from us, someone yells “we need a doctor!” A guy has pretty much collapsed in his seat, can’t seem to breathe.

My gal leaps into action like a total pro (even though she’d only graduated from med school maybe 6 months before), is by the guy’s side, propping him up in the aisle, checking his vitals. Meanwhile, James Franco is 70% of the way through his wrist… more gasps and screams, and the nerve-slicing soundtrack/sound design is going full blast. Suddenly, someone else comes down the aisle… could she look at *another* audience member who has collapsed on the other side of the theater? There was at least one more person who lost it, so for the final sequence of the movie, she is overseeing a one-person triage unit in the lobby of the screening room until the paramedics came. I wanted to run out and be with her and generally bask in her awesomeness, but didn’t want to miss the last part of the movie in case the director started talking about it.

In the end, it was nothing serious… panic/anxiety attacks, mostly. But there is no question in my mind that there would have been enough panic to end the screening if she hadn’t been there.

As it turns out, the director was 20 minutes late to the q&a, so then it was my turn to save the day by getting onstage and entertaining the crowd extemporaneously for what felt like an eternity. Honestly, I was kind of lucky that all that craziness went down since I could spend a fair amount of time getting reactions from the crowd and doing a “well, *that* was pretty crazy, right?” routine.

Plus, when the director finally did show up, I had a pretty killer opening question.

But it was an awesome night in retrospect. Me and my gal were both at our best in our completely different ways. We’ll have been married four years as of tomorrow.

© Photo: loopster70

#6

Not my story, but a colleague’s father is a doctor. Their whole family is pompous, especially the dad. He would ask everyone to call him “Dr. so-and-so” and would sign literally everything that you have to sign. Receipts at restaurants, delivery stuff, ect. They were flying back to Bangladesh and a man collapses mid-flight, so they are asking if there are any doctors. His father doesn’t say a word the whole time just because it didn’t want to actually do anything. No one else answered, so the flight attendant looked at the passenger list (not sure if that’s what it was specifically, but they had a list of passengers somehow) and saw that he had sure enough put himself down as “Dr. so-and-so.” They go to him directly and ask for his help, which he couldn’t refuse at that point now that he had been outed. His father doesn’t sign anything as “Dr.” anymore now.

© Photo: danadanaea

#7

Not my story but I heard Dr. Drew tell that he was at an entertainment conference when a woman collapsed. He started working on her but he needed to go on stage to give a talk so we handed her over to Dr. Oz who happened by.

Must have been a little surreal for the patient.

© Photo: ingrown_hair

#8

I went back to work after having a dental appointment.

Ran to a Code Blue in the lobby. Patient suspected of having a stroke.

I was going through my neuro exam. The problem was I was trying to do things like see how symmetric his face was, but I was trying to say puff out your cheeks or stick out your tongue and my mouth was totally numb. I couldn’t do it. It was rather embarrassing. The patient was fine by the way.

© Photo: mapbc

#9

Not my story, but a few days ago, a elderly woman was choking on my flight for at least 2-3 minutes. The flight attendants were completely ignoring the situation even though multiple people went up and told them. Luckily a doctor preformed the Heimlich maneuver and saved her.

© Photo: stuffed02

#10

Insert plane story.

Was on a plane with my aunt 20 years ago, and when the flight took off her lungs collapsed.

Of course they asked for a doctor, who using a coat hanger basically stabbed her with it put tubes in her and saved her life. The doctors made it in the papers.

Crazy stuff.

© Photo: Jayme9

#11

Shared this one before, I think, but was on an American flight from Pittsburgh to London and we were somewhere over Greenland.

A flight attendant spoke over the PA asking if there were any doctors on board. When she asked a second time, I finally hit my call light and a passenger was having chest pains. A brief examination told me it was less likely cardiac and more likely hepatitis (obvious jaundice). I needed the person to lay down and told the flight attendant that I needed to monitor his condition for any changes, but I didn’t think an emergency landing was necessary. The only seats that reclined that far was in first class, so I got my upgrade.

We landed at Heathrow without incident and had paramedics waiting at the gate. When I got home from my trip, i had a letter waiting for me from the chief medical officer at American thanking me and giving me 50,000 frequent flyer miles, which was good for a domestic flight.

© Photo: everycredit

#12

“Is anyone here a marine biologist?”.

© Photo: joshman0219

#13

Not a doctor. Just Jewish.

Services are going well Saturday morning, when one man on the bimah keels over. Rabbi leaps over to check on him, president gets up and yells “is there a doctor here? “

50 people stand up. Wealthy Jewish congregation. President throws his hands up “wait! Is there a cardiologist here? “

Now it’s down to three rushing the bimah. Guy had had a pretty major heart attack but lived.

© Photo: Corelin

#14

The one where you don’t claim to be a doctor, due to possible litigation. Good Samaritan laws don’t apply here.

#15

Was at the movies in a almost empty theater when someone had a seizure in our row. There were only about 20 people in the theater, 5 of them happened to be nurses trying to enjoy their day off (none of them knew each other, they just all had a day off and decided to see a movie).

Until they realized something was going on and turned on the lights, I was using the flashlight in my phone (my now husband was on the line with 911 and relaying questions/answers back and forth) and even without a medical background I was able to help since it turned out the girl with the seizure was taking a medication I was also taking at the time so I was able to let them know that “that can increase chance of seizures” when they got to the “is she on medications” part.

© Photo: tappytapper

#16

Aight, this isn’t my story as I’m not a doctor, but my friend Ricky’s.

Ricky’s girlfriend went to Ottawa to do a fellowship during his last year of his med school. So after he’d graduated and passed his medical licence the, first thing he does is go visit her there. Can’t remember if it was on the flight out or on the return trip. but he was sitting there in his seat waiting for take-off and the stewardess asks if there is a doctor on-board. My friend, usually the most cockiest person in the universe, starts getting scared but aware of his responsibility puts his hand up anyway. He explains to the crew that he’s a freshly minted doctor and he doesn’t feel at all confident about his first solo doctoring being on a plane.

lucky for him, there wasn’t an emergency and the crew was just making sure there was a doctor on board for of one passenger, in case that passenger had an issue. additionally, they found another doctor on board and then she brought him a beer for his honesty.

© Photo: oberynMelonLord

#17

Happened to my father who is a surgeon, but I was here. We were in a plane, everybody was sleeping (11 hours flight) but suddenly we were wake up by a voice from the speaker asking if there’s a doctor in the plane.

There was a baby who was like 1/2 month whose parents were worry because they couldn’t wake him up. We were flying above a country where it’s not really safe to land to so everyone started to panic a bit. My father woke up, went to see the baby, and just decide to pinch his nipples.

Well, it worked.

© Photo: mon0chrom

#18

This happened to my mother:
She was on a long plane ride sitting next to an older lady when halfway through the flight the woman started to go into cardiac arrest. She freaked out and called for help, and the captain went on the loudspeaker asking if there was a doctor on the plane.

As it turned out, there WAS in fact a doctor on the plane. Several, actually. A team of cardiologists was going to a conference in the city the plane was landing in, and they had all their equipment in carry-on. They got the woman stabilized almost immediately. She was actually better of than if she had a heart attack on the street, because she didn’t have to wait for an ambulance.

© Photo: Waterhorse816

#19

My flight from SeaTac to Nashville was delayed for hours, and my friend was there to see me off. We sat at the bar for hours and got completely drunk. I finally got on the plane and planned to have a drunken nap, until the whole “is there a Doctor on the plane” thing started. Now, technically I’m not a doctor, but I am a PA with 20+ years’ experience. I didn’t respond, until they had no volunteers after 3 announcements and said they were going to have to turn the plane around. Oh no, I thought.

So, I ring my call light and tell the flight attendant the truth- I’m a PA who is wasted. That was good enough for them. I’m whisked to the back, while others are applauding, and there is my patient- an extremely old man who appears dead. Ashen white, unresponsive. I have no medical equipment except for an AED. But wait, he had a pulse! Not dead.

When I practice medicine, I rely on my Spidey Sense. It rarely fails me. It’s my party trick. So, with all my drunken might, I summon it up, and it comes to me… I ask the flight attendant for a juice box, and squirt some OJ into his mouth. Bam! His eyes pop wide open and he asks where he is. Diabetic with low blood sugar for the win! The flight continues on, and they seat me next to him. The crowd goes crazy, and I am rewarded with….drink coupons.

© Photo: kristencolby

#20

Someone was having a heart attack at the store and someone shouted is there anyone who is a doctor one guy was like he is, points at a random guy. The guy is in scrubs and a lab coat the guy was like I’m a dentist. The guy passed.

© Photo: anon

#21

Was at work when an elderly lady fell down the escalator. Fortunately the customer in front of her was a nurse.

© Photo: BlueAndDog

#22

I was on my way to my nursing classes (dude for context). I had my scrubs on, stethoscope, and badge. I come across a head on collision that had just occurred a few moments earlier at a busy intersection, a Ford Focus vs. a large pickup truck. I stop my car, put on some gloves, and grab my medical kit from the back seat. When I get closer I notice the driver of the Ford is bleeding profusely out of her upper left forehead and screaming while her passenger is unconscious with unknown injuries. The driver of the pickup appears to be fine. I quickly realize this is out of my league, I’m only in my first week of training, and I’m standing there with this wimpy first aid kid while this poor girl is screaming. I wait until an ambulance arrives and head on to my classes.

#23

Medic here. Was on a call where a guy got gasoline in his eyes in front of Lowe’s. We’re in the middle of flushing his eyes out when this guy walks up and announces that he’s a doctor and what is going on? One of the senior medics asks him what kind of doctor he is. “I’m a cardiologist” “His heart is fine, doc. It’s his eyes that are the problem!” Doc just walked away.

#24

Can we count mistaken for a doctor? I was a paramedic student, completing my clinical hours on an Army base with a provider that I had served overseas with. Although I was in the Army, he called me by my first name and insisted I be his shadow. (This was only occasionally). FF a couple of months into this routine and I’m at the base grocery store. A lady comes bursting in pre-panic screaming for an ambulance and a doctor. So I bebop outside and mosey to the commotion, where there is a (70ish) woman sitting on the ground by her car being attended to by another woman.

I ask what is going on and the typical head injury questions. The woman attending her informs me that she started acting goofy, fell, and caught herself with her head. She says that the woman seems to be fine (alert and oriented) and that she wants to drive herself home. I, with all this medical authority that I don’t have, say “Hell no. She needs to go to the hospital. By ambulance.” She agrees. It was at this time that I recognize the woman helping her as a nurse from the base hospital. The nurse that I had a crush on and hoped every time I was there that I would get to work with, but never did. So I just say hey, you’re a nurse and you don’t need me getting in the way. She asks me to stay just in case. Then the ambulance arrives.

I’m kind of still hanging around in the background as she hands off the retiree’s wife. I was honestly hoping to swoop in afterwards and maybe invite her to grab a beer. As she’s talking to the paramedics she informs them that the patient is in fact going to the hospital and that Dr Jeff agrees. Then points to me. I slowly realize that I’m Dr Jeff. I have no idea what to do, so I get in to a staring contest with the EMS dude, all while telepathically communicating the presence of s**t in my pants. They just decided to load up the patient and go without a consultation from the non Dr who specializes in idiocy. I turned and hurried back in to the store to get my deodorant and ramen noodles. No beer. No love story. No doctor.

A couple of days later I called my provider buddy and told him the story. He laughed and told me that he had already heard the story about the lazy and arrogant Dr. Jeff. He was just happy to know who she was talking about.

#25

At Ultra music festival one year, a girl passed out and started seizing in front of me. I wasn’t in a state of mind to do much of anything, other than protect her airway and get EMS. Between overexerting herself, the heat, and likely ingestion of something laced, she just a recipe for disaster.

Prior to that, my nickname in our group was Captain America (I was one of the only native born Americans in our crew). After that, I became Dr. Captain America. In all reality though, I was pretty useless.

#26

Student doctor story? This happened at a grocery store down the road from a large University known for its health science programs. They put a call over the PA asking for anyone with medical training to come to the desk, as someone was having a medical emergency. There was practically a stampede of people going to help – guess it was prime time for the students from the med programs to do their shopping.

#27

So back midway through my third year of medical school I was on a red-eye flight home. I’d just fallen asleep when I was woken up by calls of “is anyone a doctor?” while we were still on the runway. I looked around nervously because honestly I would be pretty useless in most medical scenarios and saw a guy farther back vomiting into the aisle and kind of slumped forward. I saw two older gentleman from the front of the plane walk back to the patient and assumed they were medical professionals, so decided to go back to sleep. Woke up the next morning after we landed. My parents who were sitting up front told me while we were getting our bags that they overheard the flight attendants say they couldn’t believe there weren’t any medical professionals on the plane… fortunately the patient ended up getting off the plane before we took off and got help, but per my oath, I should have identified myself. Whoops.

#28

I was working at my college’s reunion last weekend and during the orientation they had a quick thing on what to do in a medical emergency. Basically, find somebody who knows what they’re doing, but at the end they add, “But also, chances are there will be an alum nearby who is a doctor, and they can do a much better job than you can.”

So I’m at a dinner and I notice somebody getting the Heimlich and run over to grab my boss, who is maybe 20 feet away. By the time I’ve gotten to her and we’re going back to the person who was choking, it’s already been resolved. Orientation was right.

#29

I’m a nurse, but the funniest thing I ever saw was when a dentist was the first to respond to the call for a doctor. He got there to see the patient sweating but lying very still (the man was sitting 2 seats away from me), saying there was ‘pain in his stomach’. The dentist checks the pulse, looks at the pupils, pushes on the abdomen and the patient jumps a little, but goes back to staying still. Dentist’s assessment: if he were seriously sick he’d be thrashing about a lot more in pain. It’s safe to fly the remaining 3 hours to our destination.

Then a psychiatrist comes along (turns out he was in the bathroom when the call was made) and has a look at the man. He takes one look, prods the abdomen, and tells the attendants that the plane needs to land *immediately*. 1.5 hours later the man was in hospital with a perforated appendix.

I suppose this isn’t all that surprising when you consider the number of abdomens a dentist has to assess during their training i.e. zero. The dentist sat very red and subdued after the pilot rightly asked ‘which of them has the medical degree?’ before deciding when to land.

#30

Not a doctor, but the person that needed a doctor.

I was on a flight from PHL to SFO and was really stressed about a lot of things. So I woke up earlier than normal for the airport and got there. Hit up the bar and had myself a liquid breakfast. By boarding time I had a few too many.

Plane taxis and takes off, I have to use the restroom as I’m not feeling well. Well, I took two steps and next thing I know there’s a Dr. above me. Seems I blacked out. Thank god for the Dr.

#31

My mother is a doctor (retired now) and told me a story of this happening. They were on a trans-atlantic flight, when a call came out for a doctor. Turns out someone was not feeling well, and the pilots wanted to know if they should call for an emergency landing. I think Mom said the person was feeling flu-like symptoms, and Mom told the pilots that he/she would be just as miserable on the ground as in the air, and would probably prefer to get where they were actually going instead of being miserable in a strange place. No emergency landing was made.

#32

I’m in a filled commercial airline just before take-off. Returning from Norway to Denmark.

Near the entrance is a man with severe nosebleed. I offer my assistance, but they don’t have the right remedy’s to stop the bleeding. + the guy have high blood pressure. A steward assure me, that they are not going anywhere until I am done. I look down the aisles of the packed airplane in horror.

After a while that seemed like forever, I more or less got the bleeding to stop. Steward look at me and ask if the man is allowed to fly home. Don’t worry he will not get on the plane unless you allow it. The poor guy look at me in horror. I cross my fingers and allow him to fly.

When I return to my seat several guys salute me. They are all doctors, but they didn’t come forward because I did.

Man with nosebleed make it home, at Cph airport they have an ambulance waiting for him.

#33

I was the ‘is there a doctor on the plane’ twice. First time, I was flying from LAX to JFK, and it was pretty simple – a woman with a cramp in her leg worried about a blood clot in her leg, but mostly I think just anxiety. (you would be OK for a couple of hours even with a clot) The second time was a little more nerve wracking – the man passed out, was sweaty and pale. He woke up, threw up, then said he felt OK but just tied. The on-board stethoscope is a useless prop since it’s a cheap one, and you can’t hear over the noise anyway. He had a good radial pulse, which means his systolic pressure is at least 90, and he was breathing OK without chest pain. He didn’t have any obvious cardiac risk factors. There’s not really anything you can do – the only decision is ‘ground the plane’ or not. My instinct told me he was OK and I was 95% confident that there was nothing seriously wrong. We were about 45 minutes from our destination, and when the flight attendant asked me what to do, I asked her how fast we could get there – she said we could get there sooner. The pilot got us there in 20 minutes, and we went straight to the gate. It was pretty cool, because we had been behind, but we wound up getting in on time, even with getting him off the plane first. I stayed with him for a while, an he was OK – happily he and his wife went on to have a great vacation. It was nice that a whole planeload of people were happy with me – probably because we got there early. I’ve had friends who made a plane land for someone with chest pain, who turned out to have a massive MI, and wound up with an entire plane load of people pissed off at them.

#34

Not a doctor, but slightly relevant story. This was a large family gathering over a weekend, rented location with bunk beds in for bed rooms, large dining room, etc. I were sharing a room with my aunt whom is a psychologist (shares bachelor and masters). I was sleeping in that room to avoid my fathers snoring. Sunday morning we were woken by a hammering on the door – another member had cardic arrest, and they wanted help. Only CPR for her to do – which she carried on during for the 20 minutes it took the ambulance to arrive to where we were. Me? I took a shower and made coffee for the early breakfast – there was nothing I could do to help.

#35

My uncle was the doctor on this one.
We were in a highway in Colombia and my uncle was driving the car. There was a lady on our left who kept pushing her luck seeing how close he could get to the pickup in front of her.
Eventually the pickup had to stop short and the woman slammed head on against the back of it. Her neck bent as far as I’ve seen one do so and she collapsed on the floor.
Out of the tens of neurosurgeons in that area of the country, my uncle happened to be one of them. He managed to get her off the road and keep her stabilized until the paramedics got there.

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