“Doctor Mike” – Dr. Mikhail Varshavski, DO – is among the most prominent online health care influencers with 14.6 million subscribers on YouTube and more than 5 million on Instagram. He says many more public health and medical practitioners need to post on these platforms, too.
“There’s an attack on the scientific community. We’re actually to blame for some of it,” he told Dean Megan L. Ranney, MD, MPH, at a special Yale School of Public Health Leaders in Public Health conversation February 10. He said health professionals have been too slow to go onto social media and provide education and scientific education. “You’re missing this opportunity. Use this [social media] to get people on your side.”
His original purpose for posting on social media back in 2012 was more casual: he wanted to prove you could be a medical student and still have a life. His initial forays led him to develop a second course of study—on what makes for successful social media posts.
He started to mix in occasional posts about his dog and family. “I was hesitant to share stories” like these, he said, worried it would undermine his professional reputation. But he saw that it made him more relatable when he was talking about medical science.
Being relatable gave him credibility during the COVID-19 pandemic, when he shifted his YouTube channel. “My patients were falling victim to misinformation,” he said. Patients were coming to him after having delayed treatment because of information they were finding on social media or were spending money on “things they didn’t need, ‘miracle’ products, snake-oil type stuff.” Social media and digital media more broadly “ruined their view of health care,” he said.
But social media can also change their views, he said. “I’m here to motivate more of you to do what I do and do it better.” Because media has become fragmented, no longer do most people go to a show like 60 Minutes to validate or debunk information. “So, we need to be everywhere,” he said.
Doctor Mike still makes posts that are fun, sometimes even silly. He said finding ways to make science fun “gets people excited about learning about science.” And he assured budding social media influencers in the audience that it was OK to make mistakes. He shared how he’d seen a TikTok saying that sniffing alcohol prep pads could relieve nausea. “I was dismissive of it,” he said. But he got feedback that it actually worked. “We use that in the emergency department!” Ranney confirmed.
He posted about his error. “I had to own up to making that mistake.”
The lesson here for health care professionals engaging on social media is to be honest. “We need to call it misinformation when it is,” Doctor Mike said. “But we have to say when we don’t know.”