By "minion", he means bottom rung medical staff like myself. Judging by the work responsibilities involved, it is exactly the same kind of minion.
Rather than be 100% certain in his responses, he should be more honest and accurate with them. Things like--
"I was informed [department] had taken [patient] to [department] for [procedure]. It's possible they either haven't taken [him/her] yet, or they finished early. Let's check."
You CANNOT FAIL with that kind of response. It conveys the necessary information (Patient is presumably getting a procedure done), without absolutes about the patient's location, because until you physically check YOU DO NOT KNOW.
If the patient is in the room, one of two things has happened: Patient has not left for the procedure yet, OR-- They have been returned early and nobody notified you. (you would be surprised how poor inter-staff communication can be.) If they are in the room, Well, Doctor can see them now! Whoot! If not, well--- you have an explanation and a hint on where they are and where to find them.
With the kind of response Poo got, I would suspect the Aid is a lazy SOB who wants to parrot an excuse to not care for the patient, AND-- Is clearly too dumb to pick up on the "Look, I totally KNOW the patient is in there, and I am giving you rope to hang yourself with, you stupid ass." verbiage and behavior from Poo. Precisely the kind of Aid that should be replaced sooner rather than later.