Man in tech support walked into the control room and asked the lead doctor if she was a nurse. Then he learned she’d be leading his cases

On August 19, 2026, a doctor named Lola Oladini (@loladini_md) turned to Instagram to share that gender stereotypes exist in American healthcare even today.  In her video, she called out a new male tech who assumed she was a nurse, even though her badge said otherwise. "This happens more than it should," Oladini said, and her post has received over 330,000 views on her page. 

A surprising question

Oladini said every morning they have a meeting at 8 am where she runs through the to-do list for the day. This one time, she was standing at the head of the control room, near the whiteboard, ready for the grill, when a lead tech entered the room. He introduced himself to her, and once Oladini greeted him back, the man asked, "Are you a nurse?" The physician was surprised, especially because her badge indicated that she was a doctor. "It is okay to be the nurse. What I'm asking about is the assumption that I must be the nurse," Oladini explained. 

In a follow-up August 22 video, Oladini revealed that she was so focused on the upcoming cases that she didn’t even register this tech’s presence until he said, “You must be the nurse.” In her words, she protected her gravitas fiercely. “First name Doctor. Last name Oladini. That was the only way,” as she put it. But the story, she said, didn’t start with this tech. It had been going on ever since she could remember, including her first job. The incident made her recall a previous case where her staff treated her in the same way.

'Not the first time'

That day, she prioritized a same-day chemo session for a stage 4 cancer patient, for which she had to delay one routine case by 45 minutes. When the patient arrived, the staff blamed her for the delay instead of telling the truth about the life-threatening emergency. “That moment taught me something I haven’t forgotten. You cannot extract respect from people who don’t want to give it to you,” Oladini quoted.

Unfortunately, Dr. Oladini is not the only victim of this unconscious gender bias. According to a survey (by T Toi, S Lewis, S Lounis, A Najdawi), 65% of females have had their roles misidentified at least once a week, compared to 0% of males. Of these, 75% reported negative emotions associated with being mistaken for their role. Additionally, 62% of the females were asked to perform non-medical tasks compared to 31% of the male doctors, suggesting the grim position of women in the world of healthcare.

'What made him think that?'

Viewers were just as saddened as the doctor. @kschwaber commented, “I’m not a doctor, but I would have said, ‘It’s ok to be confused when you walk into a new space like this. I’m going to give you another chance to use the context clues to figure out who I am.’” @amandarachel.stone said, “I don’t think this is a diss on nurses; clearly it’s about the fact he assumed she wasn’t the one in charge!”

You can follow Lola Oladini (@loladini_md) on Instagram for personal storytimes and video logs.

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