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{{trope}}
{{quote|[[Tempting Fate|Calling]] [[The Three Stooges|Dr. Howard, Dr. Fine, Dr. Howard]].|''[[St. Elsewhere]]''}}
{{quote|'''Dogen:''' What do you think's wrong with my brain, doctor?
'''Dr. Loboto:''' How should I know? I'm a dentist! But here's what I do know: if the tooth is bad, we pull it!
|''[[Psychonauts]]''}}
When a character is shot or has some other lethal wound, but the next hospital is 100 miles away or the police are after them, an alternative is needed. It doesn't matter if they find [[Not That Kind of Doctor|a vet or a dentist]]; as long as they know how to hold a needle, they will do.
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To a ''very'' limited extent this is justified, as medical doctors in different specialties do all go through basic medical training, and some of the skills of one discipline cross over. A bit.
Oftentimes a subtrope of [[Closest Thing We Got]], if the dentist's employed in an emergency. Compare [[All Monks Know Kung Fu]], when a Christian monk (or a run-of-the-mill Buddhist one, for that matter) [[Did Not Do the Research|is presumed to practice martial arts like the Shaolin ones]]. Compare/contrast with [[Super Doc]], when you can actually find a genuine doctor who is more like medicine's answer to the [[Omnidisciplinary Scientist]].
{{examples}}
▲== Anime and Manga ==
* A massive car crash in the ''[[Pokémon (anime)|Pokémon]]'' anime results in a full Pokemon Center that is forced to send excess Pokemon to a human hospital and a doctor who prescribes superglue for everything he can get away with.
** Of course, this is the first and ''only'' time when we can see that the medicine in-universe isn't limited to pokemon.
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* Averted in ''[[Fullmetal Alchemist]]'' with regards to Dr. Knox. Introduced as a medical examiner, it seems that later decisions to visit him for treatment are strange. In fact, Knox had originally been a highly skilled physician but after taking part in medical experiments on captive Ishbalans he felt he was only fit to handle the dead.
==
* In the [[Eddie Murphy]] version of ''[[Doctor Dolittle]]'', the title character, a physician, has to operate on a tiger. However, he is regarded by his peers as being reckless, and he never would've gotten as far as he did if the tiger couldn't talk to him.
** And unlike most other examples, he had some time to cram before the operation.
* Skirted in ''[[Darkman]] 2'', the weapon builder is a doctor, but not a medic.
* Parodied in ''[[Punch
{{quote|'''Barry:''' I wanted to ask you something because you're a doctor. I don't like myself sometimes. Can you help me?
'''Walter:''' Barry-- I'm a dentist. }}
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* Kate Brewster in ''[[Terminator|Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines]]'' was a veterinarian. By ''Terminator: Salvation'', she had become a doctor. Since most of the world was destroyed at Judgment Day, it's highly unlikely she got to attend medical school, so she probably got promoted to doctor based on her veterinary skills.
==
* Stephen Maturin in the ''[[Aubrey And Maturin]]'' novels by Patrick O'Brien tends to show this sort of thing from time to time.
* Not exactly this trope, but in ''[[Balzac and The Little Chinese Seamstress]],'' the main characters are sent to a remote mountain during the Cultural Revolution because their parents are doctors and dentists. So when the nasty village headman has a rotten tooth...let's just say the boys have some fun with this...
* On the ''[[Discworld]]'' people who actually know what they're doing don't go to a doctor for major medical problems, they go to a vet. The logic is thus: If a doctor isn't good, they usually just have a dead patient. But if a vet isn't good, they usually have a rich, furious, mafioso racing horse owner with [[Mooks|lots of hired muscle]] [[You Have Failed Me...|and little patience]] (or worse, if the mafioso in question is [[All Trolls Are Different|Chrysophrase the troll]]) to deal with. Hence why horse vet "Doughnut Jimmy" Folsom is regarded as one of the best doctors in the city, despite his tendency to act as if all of his patients are horses, regardless of their actual species. Later in the continuity, they start going to [[The Igor|Igors]]. When someone is trained to stitch together dead body parts into living monsters, stitching someone's lost arm back onto the body it belongs to is much, much easier.
** Later still, in ''[[
* Shows up in ''[[The Dresden Files]]'' story "Mean Streets": {{spoiler|Waldo Butters, one of Chicago's medical examiners,}} acts as Harry's physician—and it's stated that he's done this a number of times already. Harry, like most wizards, is enough of a [[Walking Techbane]] that his presence in a proper hospital would endanger the other patients.
** Used in subsequent books too. He even takes Morgan to him in Turn Coat {{spoiler|Subverted, in that despite Butters' best efforts, his condition continues to worsen. Butters' work just delays Morgan's death until the end of the book.}}
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* In the [[Ciaphas Cain]] novel ''Death or Glory'', the chief medical officer of the scratch company Cain forms from the scattered remnants of various Guard units, PDF units, and street gangs was a vet. He was the only medically trained person they could find.
▲== Live Action TV ==
* ''[[The Brittas Empire]]'' had an episode when the cast ended up having a vet deliver a baby in the sauna and a doctor deliver a calf in a squash court.
* In ''[[Prison Break]]'', the character T-bag (Theodore Bagwell), a known pedophile {{spoiler|who has escaped prison is tied up (with one hand by chains) and waiting for the cops to arrive and take him back to jail, when he decides to cut off his hand in order to escape. Bleeding to death, he takes another person's hand and has a vet attach it to his arm.}} Yes, he's actually bad-ass enough to pull that off. It should probably be noted that it doesn't work. It just kind of sits there uselessly until he replaces it with a properly made prosthetic.
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* One episode of ''[[Doctor Who]]'' takes place at an Antarctic outpost cut off from the outside world. When one of its staff needs an alien-Virus-infected limb amputated, a biologist is tasked to perform the emergency surgery because he's a better choice than the geologist or botanist: at least he's probably held a scalpel before, if only for dissections.
== [[Music]] ==
* Invoked almost by name in [[Was (Not Was)]]'s 1990 song [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-TxHInkyNpg "I Feel Better Than James Brown"]:
{{quote|''I built our love out of blood.
''I went to the dentist and told him "take out my heart".}}
==
* ''[[Modesty Blaise (comic strip)|Modesty Blaise]]'': In "Million Dollar Game", a vet is shot in the thigh in a position he cannot reach. He talks Modesty through the procedure for removing the bullet.
==
* ''[[Trauma Center]]'': The player is called on to ''disarm a bomb'' in the first game. (Vaguely justified in that your assistant dated a guy on the bomb squad, and you do at least have the stable hands required.)
** ''[[Trauma Center]]: New Blood'' forces the player into a dog operation when a dog is shot.
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* ''[[Mass Effect]]''—Despite the fact that Mordin Solus is a [[Not That Kind of Doctor|doctorate]] in genetics and biochemistry he still runs a clinic in [[Wretched Hive|Omega]]. Justified by the fact that his assistants are more or less medically trained and his knowledge about [[Bizarre Alien Biology]] is a vital part of what keeps the clinic up and running. (Not to mention the fact, that he also occasionally [[Badass Bookworm|shoots and dismembers the mercs that try to disturb the clinic's work]] )
==
* In the now hiatus'd webcomic ''[[Tourniquet]]'', the main character shapeshifts into a demonic winged form, but when he goes back to human shape, he's unable to make his horns and wings go away, and needs them to be removed surgically. {{spoiler|He also has a dead demon that requires an autopsy.}} Early in the story, his usual physician is unavailable, so he manages to talk a coroner/medical examiner into performing the surgery, despite, as she says, her talents running towards desculpting, not mending. {{spoiler|She never gets the chance to remove them, as the demon he had her autopsy wasn't quite dead and mauled her fairly badly when it woke up on the table.}}
* Lampshaded numerous times in ''[[The Adventures of Dr. McNinja]]'':
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** At the end of Spooky Stuff, he's asking people if they want to discuss their current "General Practicioner? Or Dentist? Or Neurologist? Whatever."
** Justified, though - the Doc had numerous clones made of him in college, each of them mastering a different field. And then they re-amalgamated, to make the doc. He is now an expert in every field except agriculture.
* ''Martian Magazine'' has [http://martianmagazine.com/comic/load-of-fun/ someone who used to work in a hospital].
== [[Web
* Jonas Wharton of ''[[Lonelygirl15]]'' accidentally cuts his hand open in "Flesh Wound" and has it stitched and bandaged by a vet.▼
* Averted in one ''[[Global Guardians PBEM Universe|Global Guardians]]'' story: after a titanic battle between the heroes and villains leaves several innocent bystanders injured, Diamond began treating their injuries as best she could with the resources at hand. When a cop asked her what the heck she thought she was doing, and suggested that she wait for the paramedics, she pointedly admitted that, in her [[Secret Identity]], she was a ''trauma surgeon'' and thus knew what she was doing.▼
== [[Western Animation]] ==
* In ''[[Venture Brothers]]'', Billy Quizboy, a neurogeneticist, is frequently called upon to do surgery on something other than the brain, although in a season 4 episode he actually gets to do that. Previously he operated on Dean's testicles and sewed one man's head onto another man's shoulders, and claims to have grafted the head of a horse onto the torso of a well-known celebrity.
* In ''[[South Park]]'', during an emergency at the hospital, the surgeon is forced to employ the children as honorary doctors on the grounds that they'd once watched a medical drama on TV. Stan, being squeamish, [[Squick|empties his stomach into a patient's incision]].
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* On ''[[Batman: The Brave And The Bold|Batman the Brave And The Bold]],'' [[Aquaman]] calls [[The Atom]] (Dr. Ryan Choi) to help when [[Batman]] is infected with a deadly pathogen. [[Not That Kind of Doctor|Ryan Choi is a physicist]]. Fortunately, a physicist [[Incredible Shrinking Man|who can shrink]], so at least they could [[Fantastic Voyage]] the problem away.
▲* Jonas Wharton of ''[[Lonelygirl15]]'' accidentally cuts his hand open in "Flesh Wound" and has it stitched and bandaged by a vet.
▲* Averted in one ''[[Global Guardians PBEM Universe|Global Guardians]]'' story: after a titanic battle between the heroes and villains leaves several innocent bystanders injured, Diamond began treating their injuries as best she could with the resources at hand. When a cop asked her what the heck she thought she was doing, and suggested that she wait for the paramedics, she pointedly admitted that, in her [[Secret Identity]], she was a ''trauma surgeon'' and thus knew what she was doing.
▲== Real Life ==
* The [[wikipedia:North Hollywood shootout|North Hollywood Shootout]]: A couple of heavily-armed robbers wearing full kevlar shot up a bank and with the police officers trying to take a hold of the situation, one wounded officer ended up taking refuge in a dentist's office. All the dentist could do was stop the bleeding as best he could and offer painkillers, but this did end up saving the officer's life.
* You know how a psychiatrist gains a professional psychiatry license? A full M.D. is the ''start''. Psychologists are the ones with PhDs; they can get mad when you mix up the titles.
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** Necessary, really, as vets frequently incur injuries from uncooperative patients.
* Many states' 'Good Samaritan' laws protect dentists, vets, and so forth from being sued for failing to save someone they're forced to treat in an emergency, in the absence of a more appropriately-trained physician.
* On Discovery Health's ''Untold Stories of the E.R.'', one episode featured a med student with a background in biochemistry and pharmacology who ended up delivering a baby - rather, watching in shock while a nurse delivered the baby. A family with the mother in labor walks into the wrong section of the hospital, where the med student is, and the instructor orders him to help the woman. He had been a resident for
{{reflist}}
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[[Category:Doctor Index]]
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