- Recently, two TikTok videos
by medical professionals have gone viral, and not for good reasons. Are these truly mocking patients, or are they just innocent jokes? Let's see for ourselves. (lo-fi hip-hop music) Being on social media as a public figure is hard enough on its own, but being a medical
professional on social media is even harder. Look, I'm a board certified
family medicine physician, I've been doing social
media for five plus years, over 9 million subscribers, over 400 million views
on this YouTube channel, and I'm still figuring it out. So I'm not surprised that
medical professionals who are just getting into social media are already making some mistakes and taking some heat for it. What I thought we'd do today is watch the two videos that have garnered a lot of negative buzz, discuss my thoughts on those videos and what should happen moving forward, and then leave you off with
some tips that I believe would help anyone, but
especially medical professionals, navigate this tricky
social media landscape. Let's check the first one out that made national headlines. (gasping rhythmically) (whooping to the beat) - [Female Doctor] Get it! Get it! Get it!
(gasping stops) (female doctor continues rapping) - The tweet that this
came from actually says, "We know when y'all faking,"
with a few laughing emojis. This is frustrating. I'm all about being able
to laugh at ourselves, about finding humor in dark places. I've said time and time again, I try and lighten my patients' mood by making jokes quite often, even patients who are the most sick, and, to be honest, they
usually appreciate it. However, this is a strong however, when I walk into a patient's room, I don't just blindly make a joke. I first develop a
rapport with the patient, understand where they're coming from, pick up their verbal and non-verbal cues. Then I say the joke, and then I pick up those cues again to see
how the joke landed. It doesn't always land. But at that point, I
can readjust or explain. When you post a video
like this to social media where millions of people can see it, now you've lost the ability to pick up on context, the ability to explain yourself
to everyone watching it what you really meant. There's such a fine line
of humor in medicine that you really just need to be careful, especially in this day and age where there's a growing distrust
of medical professionals by the general public. In fact, there was a huge segment on this with John Oliver covering medical bias and it really explored how women, and specifically women of color, are actually disbelieved
disproportionately when it comes to their symptoms. And then a video like this comes out? It stokes that fire right away. There's just a way to do tasteful comedy and this was just a miss for me. Let's take a look at the second video, which I found through Twitter, but it was initially posted to TikTok by the username Mursimedical. I usually like to blur the account names and peoples' faces, but
this video has been viewed millions of times and I
think the facial expressions actually contribute to
the feel of the video, so let's just take a look at it together. (quiet, mischievous music) I can definitely see how
from one perspective, if you're watching this
as someone who's maybe had symptoms that have been written off by medical professionals,
how that can trigger you. Easily! If I went to an ER and was saying, "I think I have symptoms of a heart attack "because I looked it up online," and a doctor rolls their eyes and says, "Is it cocaine?" I would be pretty upset by that. Yes, patients get their illnesses wrong, they're not doctors. Yes, they're gonna recite to you something they read online
that's gonna be inaccurate, but they're not doctors. Now, if this person was
a comedian doing this, I don't think anyone
would actually be mad, but when you're the person
who's supposed to be taking care of people
when they're in their most insecure moments, when
they're the most frightened, and you're poking fun of that situation, (sighs) there's a line there that gets crossed. This video actually came on my radar from a post by Sarah Mojarad that reads as such, "Ugh, posts like this
jeopardize the public's trust "in medical professionals. "Why? "Symptoms aren't taken seriously, "She's profiled the person based on age, "patient may have Googled
symptoms to avoid trip to the ER. "Don't make fun of patients. "It is and always will be unprofessional." I actually spoke with Sarah Mojarad right before making this video to discuss this feed that really blew up, I think this video has something like 7 million views now, and there is over a thousand comments, nearly a hundred thousand retweets, and we discussed what has come of the conversation so far. What many doctors initially
said when seeing this video was that no doctor should be on TikTok and probably not on
social media altogether, but what Sarah told me was that, upon hearing all of this critique of doctors being on TikTok, she started coming across examples of doctors doing a great
job educating on TikTok and other social media platforms. In fact, a lot of the people she told me are names I've either met in person, come across on YouTube or other platforms that truly do evidence-based, educational, and even fun content. I'm actually gonna drop all their handles in the description box so you too can check them out. I'm not the only doctor on
social media making videos. And in general, I want more
doctors on social media. Not all of them, we don't
all need to be there, but certainly there's a lack of quality, evidence-based physicians on there because misinformation is thriving. In fact, social media has become a misinformation super highway where someone makes a thread titled, "Carrots cure cancer," it goes viral because of the algorithms, and now there's no
counter information to it. But if we have enough doctors
that have a good reach, engaged viewership, they can
now put out counter information to educate patients. Is this carrot article true? Is it true that you
can detoxify your body? We can make a difference. There's over 3 billion
people logged in online across the world. We have to, as doctors, go
to where our patients are, and right now, they're
on their phones, iPads, laptops, computers, and
they're on social media. So we need to log on, figure out how to reach them, figure out how to get these algorithms to share our content, and do
the best thing we know how, educate and practice preventive care. Since I want more medical
professionals online, I thought that within this
video, I can give five tips that anyone who's in the medical field that wants to start a medical account should take into serious consideration. I, in fact, made this list when I was doing my
presentation for the Mayo Clinic on social media, so I hope you enjoy. All right, let's kick it off. Rule number one, if you post it, assume everyone will see it. This means your
co-workers, hospital staff, patients, family members of patients, all of the above, and not only will they see it, it will never be permanently deleted. I just came across a
website that actively stores all Instagram stories that,
like, profile accounts with more than 5000 followers forever! Just think about that for a second. You could post something, change your mind five seconds later thinking no one saw it, but it forever lives in that database. There was a recent case
of a first-year doctor who also got in trouble on Twitter by making a post on, I believe Instagram, where he sort of put a picture
of him looking quite sultry with the caption saying, "Ready
for your well woman exam." And for those of you who don't know, a well woman exam is a breast
and gynecological exam. Again, I want to be charitable thinking and thinking that this is not done with ill intent, but, it's just, like, it's poor taste. Two, we need to stop the fear mongering of professionals being on social media. Yes, it's hard, yes, it's not the same as having a personal
account, but it is doable. We can learn how to do it, we can learn how to get better at it, and it takes some communication. Communication is something that doctors are traditionally very poor at. In fact, Sarah Mojarad,
who I mentioned earlier, teaches science communication
and social media education for the USC medical curriculum, and I applaud her for it. She told me about the
way that she discusses certain case studies, how
doctors should function on Yelp, there's a lot to be learned here, and unless we discuss it
openly like we're doing now and not just scare people and say, "Social media is all bad,"
we're never gonna get better. Social media is not going anywhere. People love it, they
spend hours a day on it, so we need to figure out
how to get better at it instead of just saying, "Eh, not for us." I get countless emails weekly of patients saying because of my videos they've been vaccinated, their children have been vaccinated, they've changed their
stance on cancer screenings, they stopped following crash diets, and that's what this
whole journey is about. We need to not down-talk social media, we need to figure out
what the good parts are, the bad parts are, and then
make the best educated decision. Three, never give individualized advice through social media, perform
any kind of patient care, or break patient privacy, I mean HIPAA. I've seen doctors actually cross this line about giving patients direct advice, and I don't think that's ever ideal. Without doing a proper history, physical, and even running some tests, you're gonna be doing a disservice by giving individual
advice through the web. Four, if you're doing
any kind of sponsorship, declare it right away
and make sure you're not selling out to pseudo-science. One of my biggest motivating factors in going on social media and
making these YouTube videos was to debunk pseudo-science. To tell patients that
detox teas are a scam, video link below. To talk about why taking
the majority of supplements isn't necessary, video link down below. To talk about why
vaccinations are necessary and don't cause autism,
video link down below. And when it comes to
sponsorships, I do them. There's nothing wrong about
being successful financially on social media as a doctor. Just, if you're gonna do them, make sure that you let
people know right away that it's a sponsored piece of content, explain why you're doing it, and please, before you get
into any kind of arrangement, check with your conscience
and your moral compass first to make sure that you're not
deceiving any of your patients or loyal viewers. And finally, number five, be humble and ready to accept critique. None of us are perfect, and just because we
had a medical education does not make us better than anybody. We make mistakes, I have
well over 200 videos on my channel, and there's
some mistakes in them. I always make sure to, after the fact, either plug it into the
video with a correction, or at least in the description
box that I made a mistake, but we have to be open
and admit those mistakes. In fact, medical information changes. It changes quite rapidly,
we learn new things, so you have to make updates on information that is now outdated. "Please do not confuse your Google search "with my medical degree." While this is funny,
it's not exactly accurate because your medical degree
was earned years ago. Google has a lot of
up-to-date information on it so you can be wrong. When you approach medical education with that level of humility, not only to your patients and viewers get better information, but also you get better because you open up yourself
to critique and debate so it forces you to learn more, be more up-to-date, and essentially, be a better medical professional. I put together a playlist for you of my medical journey, you can check it out right here, or if you want some really
interesting medical videos, there's a playlist right here. I'll watch either one of these with you being happy and healthy. (lo-fi hip-hop music)
Dr. Mike, u look great in that color!
Doctors in those TikToks are the reason why I won't go see a doctor, even though I should be seeing a doctor for my heart (born with a heart defect, had surgery in 85 at age 2, have a murmur and other complications), I have asthma and apnea, as well as other physical and neurological issues.
But the last few times I went to see a doctor I was made to feel like I was a liar, a dope seeker and a waste of time. I went to a clinic because I kept having panic attacks that would actually wake me and instead of treating me like a patient, the doctor said (In French) "It's easy coming in here. You get your prescription and can just leave like that". I never returned to that clinic and never sought treatment. It's been over 10 years since.
I also ended up in the emergency because I was (and am still having) heart issues and instead of listening, the doctor went out and got a second doctor to ask me what kind of drugs I'd been taking. If they had taken the actual time to listen and pay attention, they'd have known that my medicare card had been expired for several years when I went to the ER. What kind of dope seeker lets their medicare card expire? I hadn't used my card for so long (because I'm scared of seeing doctors) that I hadn't even noticed my card had expired until that particular visit and the person at the desk told me. Not only that, they made it very clear how much money the hospital had to spend every time they have to use the MRI. Why would you tell a patient that? It's also been over ten years since I last tried to get help for heart issues. The clinic and ER visit were several years apart. It's been that long.
Being an adult with Autism/PTSD as well, it's really difficult for me to feel comfortable with doctors or expressing myself properly. Sometimes I'll say things wrong or in a weird way, or I'll repeat myself or ramble because I'm having anxiety issues. Or I'll resist help/treatment because I'm scared. I know that if and when I have to go see a doctor, I'll have to undress and be exposed to a complete stranger. Not only that, they'll have to touch me. That makes me really, really uncomfortable and anxious.
Just thinking about having to see a doctor makes me feel nauseous and want to cry. And I get that some people are going to roll their eyes, "what's the big deal?" or "you're just overreacting", etc. because I've talked about it here before and some people don't understand or can't relate. The thing is that I can't control my reactions any more than a person with an allergy can control their reactions to certain foods or products. You can manage it with medication, but that doesn't guarantee it'll work or won't introduce other complications/symptoms that you're not prepared for or accustomed to and are now constantly worrying about on top of everything else.
I'm not looking for sympathy or attention. I just want to be treated like they would any other patient they take seriously. When I see things like these TikToks, it makes me so angry. Don't just look at me and prioritize your personal bias over your professional opinion. I'm a person. Please treat me like one.
TL;DR: I don't see doctors because I'm a hot, anxious mess of nerves.