# Do you know of any doctors or have you ever visited a doctor who seemed just far too young to ... **URL:** \ **Category:** In My Humble Opinion\ **Created:** [February 17, 2016, 5:07pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-you-know-of-any-doctors-or-have-you-ever-visited-a-doctor-who-seemed-just-far-too-young-to/746350 "2016-02-17T17:07:28Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 12\ **Page:** 2
**Author:** ![WhyNot](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/w/c77e96/32.png) [@WhyNot](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/WhyNot)\ **Post date:** [February 18, 2016, 1:52pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-you-know-of-any-doctors-or-have-you-ever-visited-a-doctor-who-seemed-just-far-too-young-to/746350/21 "2016-02-18T13:52:03Z")
Forget his looks. What gave him away was that he took his own vitals and did a physical exam! Next time, hide behind the computer, “Doc”. 😃 My husband is a VA patient, which means a teaching hospital/clinic, which means every July when the new crop of baby doctors comes in, I spend the whole visit shaking my head and wondering how many of these guys can prescribe narcotics and not yet legally drink a beer. ---
**Author:** ![llcoolbj77](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/eb9ed0/32.png) [@llcoolbj77](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/llcoolbj77)\ **Post date:** [February 18, 2016, 3:42pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-you-know-of-any-doctors-or-have-you-ever-visited-a-doctor-who-seemed-just-far-too-young-to/746350/22 "2016-02-18T15:42:29Z")
With my first kid, I had an emergency C-section. After 18 hours of failed labor. I have blocked this all out. With the second, I had a scheduled C-section. But I went into labor about a week before. So we were off to the hospital. We waited a few good hours, as there were higher priority births happening. Or so they thought. The sensors they put around my belly to track contractions had slipped down, so the computer (being monitored by the nurses) wasn’t picking up my contractions. Eventually the doctor came in, said I wasn’t in labor, and should really go home. I told her that was just not true. They fiddled with the sensors, realized I was fairly well into labor, and whisked me into surgery. The anestesiologist (sp?) looked like he was 14. He had headphones on and was singing to “Call me maybe.” I was horrified. ---
**Author:** ![pendgwen](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/3da27b/32.png) [@pendgwen](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/pendgwen)\ **Post date:** [February 18, 2016, 7:27pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-you-know-of-any-doctors-or-have-you-ever-visited-a-doctor-who-seemed-just-far-too-young-to/746350/23 "2016-02-18T19:27:36Z")
I’ve been on the other side of this. I was 31 when I graduated from medical school but have always looked young for my age. During residency I frequently got comment from patients about how I didn’t look old enough to be a doctor. It still happens sometimes, just not as often as it used to. ---
**Author:** ![BeeGee](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/b5a626/32.png) [@BeeGee](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BeeGee)\ **Post date:** [February 18, 2016, 8:03pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-you-know-of-any-doctors-or-have-you-ever-visited-a-doctor-who-seemed-just-far-too-young-to/746350/24 "2016-02-18T20:03:52Z")
I was waiting in the dentist’s office once when this guy came in with a skateboard under his arm. Guess who? ---
**Author:** ![audiobottle](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/bc8723/32.png) [@audiobottle](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/audiobottle)\ **Post date:** [February 18, 2016, 10:01pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-you-know-of-any-doctors-or-have-you-ever-visited-a-doctor-who-seemed-just-far-too-young-to/746350/25 "2016-02-18T22:01:23Z")
Ha, patients ask me how old I am all the time, and I’m 35. I think some of the other posters have nailed it; you keep getting older, but new doctors, or even newer doctors keep staying the same age. I usually laugh with them but on occasion people have actually seemed upset that I look young. Nothing you can do about that, I suppose, short of dying my hair grey and wearing fake bifocals. ---
**Author:** ![sweat209](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/9fc348/32.png) [@sweat209](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/sweat209)\ **Post date:** [February 19, 2016, 12:57am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-you-know-of-any-doctors-or-have-you-ever-visited-a-doctor-who-seemed-just-far-too-young-to/746350/26 "2016-02-19T00:57:44Z")
> [@Charlie\_Wayne](#): > > Do you know of any doctors or have you ever visited a doctor who seemed just far too young to actually be a reputable licensed physician? > > I remember seeing this movie called, “As Good As It Gets”. There was one great scene in which Helen Hunt was complaining to Jack Nicholson about the doctors that treated her son. In particular she complained they looked like “teenagers”. > > [As Good as It Gets (1997) - IMDb](http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0119822) > > Well, I wanted to ask if you have ever been surprised when visiting a doctor for the first time (or just being introduced to a doctor for the first time) because they may have appeared so young to you that you may have thought someone was just fooling with you. > > In particular, do you think that if you ever made an appointment with a doctor and you saw them for the first time and they were really 18 years old … would it be possible that they could have fooled you? > > Or, would it be possible they could have passed for a doctor had they adopted a sufficiently good air of confidence and/or competence? > > Here is a story that may influence you before going to visit a new doctor for the first time. > > [http://fox2now.com/2016/02/16/florida-teen-arrested-after-posing-as-doctor-opening-medical-practice](http://fox2now.com/2016/02/16/florida-teen-arrested-after-posing-as-doctor-opening-medical-practice) > > **“Florida teen arrested after posing as doctor, opening medical practice”.** > > I’m just wondering if this kid did this perhaps because he may have had some unusual sexual fantasies that he could never have indulged with women his own age and he couldn’t afford to hire professional sex workers either. > > At any rate, it all just seems so improbable to me. But then, I’m left scratching my head and wondering if some 18 year-old could ever have fooled me. It takes 10 years of schooling to be doctor. So if you age 17 or age 18 and done high school on time than go to medical school the youngest could be 27/28. Any younger than 27 they are not a doctor. If you do not get done high school on time and buy the time they go to medical school they would be older than 28. To be a surgeon or specialist is 15 years of schooling. So if you are age 17 or age 18 and done high school on time the youngest could be 32/33. ---
**Author:** ![watchwolf49](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/w/e9c0ed/32.png) [@watchwolf49](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/watchwolf49)\ **Post date:** [February 19, 2016, 2:43am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-you-know-of-any-doctors-or-have-you-ever-visited-a-doctor-who-seemed-just-far-too-young-to/746350/27 "2016-02-19T02:43:18Z")
The local university has a grad program for “Family and Marriage Counseling”. Part of the program is for the students to take on actual cases. So the university advertises to the general public for clients and fairly dirt cheap rates. So here I am with teenage kids listening to a 22-year-old “young woman” telling me how to be a better father !!! Actually worked very very well, I learned a lot for her. We did have to sometimes wait for her to look through her textbooks, but she always found the right information for us. ---
**Author:** ![jabiru](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/bbce88/32.png) [@jabiru](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/jabiru)\ **Post date:** [February 19, 2016, 12:09pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-you-know-of-any-doctors-or-have-you-ever-visited-a-doctor-who-seemed-just-far-too-young-to/746350/28 "2016-02-19T12:09:58Z")
Our latest bunch of Registrars look about 15 years old. They don’t look old enough even to be medical students. ---
**Author:** ![audiobottle](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/bc8723/32.png) [@audiobottle](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/audiobottle)\ **Post date:** [February 20, 2016, 5:08am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-you-know-of-any-doctors-or-have-you-ever-visited-a-doctor-who-seemed-just-far-too-young-to/746350/29 "2016-02-20T05:08:36Z")
> [@sweat209](#): > > It takes 10 years of schooling to be doctor. This isn’t quite correct. It usually takes 4 years of undergrad plus 4 years of medical school to become a doctor. To become a licensed physician in the US requires a year of post-graduate training, or an “intern” year and completing all 3 steps of the US medical licensing exam (USMLE). That’s enough to legally practice medicine. To sit for the various specialty boards (internal medicine, pediatrics, OB/Gyn, and many, many more) has other requirements which all, to my knowledge, require completion of a residency program. Most are 3 years or more, and for some sub-specialties it requires another fellowship (2-3 years on top of residency) before you can be board certified in that specialty. There are a few 6 year combined undergrad+med school programs out there, plus a number of people who obtain their undergraduate degrees in less than 4 years, so you could potentially have a doctor who is 24, or even younger, as your provider. ---
**Author:** ![glowacks](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/glowacks/32/5548_2.png) [@glowacks](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/glowacks)\ **Post date:** [February 23, 2016, 1:59am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-you-know-of-any-doctors-or-have-you-ever-visited-a-doctor-who-seemed-just-far-too-young-to/746350/30 "2016-02-23T01:59:45Z")
> [@audiobottle](#): > > This isn’t quite correct. It usually takes 4 years of undergrad plus 4 years of medical school to become a doctor. To become a licensed physician in the US requires a year of post-graduate training, or an “intern” year and completing all 3 steps of the US medical licensing exam (USMLE). That’s enough to legally practice medicine. To sit for the various specialty boards (internal medicine, pediatrics, OB/Gyn, and many, many more) has other requirements which all, to my knowledge, require completion of a residency program. Most are 3 years or more, and for some sub-specialties it requires another fellowship (2-3 years on top of residency) before you can be board certified in that specialty. There are a few 6 year combined undergrad+med school programs out there, plus a number of people who obtain their undergraduate degrees in less than 4 years, so you could potentially have a doctor who is 24, or even younger, as your provider. People can also easily graduate from high school a year or two earlier than they “normally” would, and such people would be likely among those to complete an undergraduate degree in 3 years. (I could have graduated after 3 years of high school had I counted my credits and taken a required class normally taken as a senior a year earlier; someone a year behind me actually did that. I also finished college in 3 1/3 years without taking extra classes just due to AP credits, and could have easily pushed myself to get done in 3 flat if it was relevant, but I had missed 2 terms so I was really still “on time”). ---
**Author:** ![actualliberalnotoneofthose](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/e79b87/32.png) [@actualliberalnotoneofthose](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/actualliberalnotoneofthose)\ **Post date:** [February 23, 2016, 2:56am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-you-know-of-any-doctors-or-have-you-ever-visited-a-doctor-who-seemed-just-far-too-young-to/746350/31 "2016-02-23T02:56:31Z")
I think when most people say their doctors look “young” they mean 30, not actual teenagers. It’s one of those professions you expect someone to look old even if they aren’t. When I was a kid I had a doctor who was in his 30s and I probably thought he looked 50-60. FWIW, I am 36 and think most people my age and younger (unless they’ve aged badly and/or given up on life) look like kids. ---
**Author:** ![kferr](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/71e660/32.png) [@kferr](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/kferr)\ **Post date:** [February 24, 2016, 3:37pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-you-know-of-any-doctors-or-have-you-ever-visited-a-doctor-who-seemed-just-far-too-young-to/746350/32 "2016-02-24T15:37:15Z")
When I first had to see a cardiologist several years ago he was what I’d call a ‘proper’ doctor. About 60, grey, thinning hair and non-trendy clothes. When I went back 6 months later for a review I saw his assistant. She seemed to be about 25 and the med student that was observing seemed about 17. It was a bit of a (pleasant) surprise to see a pretty young woman when I was expecting an old codger. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-you-know-of-any-doctors-or-have-you-ever-visited-a-doctor-who-seemed-just-far-too-young-to/746350.md?page=1)