So, this wasn’t my experience, but my boyfriend had his physical yesterday and shared this with me.
As soon as the nurse was done with the preliminary vitals exam, she told him “okay you can undress down to your ____, but you can keep your socks on.” Apparently, my boyfriend was focused on the socks portion and didn’t remember what else he was allowed to leave on.
For some reason, he determined he was only supposed to leave his shirt and socks on. So he literally took off his button-up, pants, and underwear and just left his undershirt. I thought that meant he just waited for the doctor sitting on the table with his bottom half completely naked, but he said he had a cloth gown too.
Later, when I asked what the logic was in deducing it was his shirt, not his underwear, he could leave on, he said “well I knew he’d have me pull my underwear down at some point, and there isn’t much to examine on my chest apart from listening to my heart, so I thought it made sense.”
When his doctor went to start the exam, my boyfriend said to him “I was probably supposed to take my shirt off too?” and the doctor said “yeah... only if you want me to be able to see if I spot anything on your skin. You can do it now if you want. I’ll go take an extra long time sanitizing my stethoscope in the corner.” So he stood up, removed the drape, gown, and his undershirt and was just in his socks before returning to the exam table with just the gown on, while the doctor faced the corner of the room sanitizing his stethoscope.
Definitely not the most embarrassing thing in the world, but we had a good laugh about it.