
The Latest Crop of Instagram Influencers: Medical Students - smacktoward
https://slate.com/technology/2018/11/medical-students-instagram-influencers-ethics-debate.html
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bobowzki
As an MD I'm not sure why anyone would take medical advice from a medical
student. They think they know everything but lack clinical (practical)
experience. It's a bit like a developer saying he knows C++ after reading
"Teach yourself C++ in 21 hours".

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pjc50
Look, these days people don't want advice from actual experts, because it
might be laden with ambiguity and qualification, or require them to do actual
work. What they want is a strong, unambiguous promise of a cure, preferably
from someone young, beautiful, and slightly anti-establishment. They want the
advice doctors won't tell you!

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neuronic
As a "these-days person" I would generally like doctors with better bed side
manners more than anything else.

In Germany, the healthcare system is readily accessible for people who are
insured by one of the providers of national health insurance [1]. However,
doctors need to process a large amount of patient per day to make ends meet.

Note, I chose the word "process" with intent, because that's what it feels
like with 9 out of 10 doctors in Germany's cities nowadays. Go in, have a less
than 1min chat about your health, get screened with a medical move set that
rivals street food artists in Bangkok, then get a run-of-the-mill answer with
little effort to personalize treatment according to your medical history.

The younger the doctors, the more intense is this issue. This isn't because
younger doctors are less empathetic or something. The system simply demands
this or else. People are more cattle than anything...

Oh and fitting right in with the Instagram fame, young medical professionals
are all moving to the fun cities in Germany. Smaller towns and villages are
hemorrhaging doctors. They are just not attractive in any way, especially with
Germanys catastrophically bad Internet and mobile infrastructure.

[1]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_health_insurance](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_health_insurance)

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SlowRobotAhead
As much as Europeans love to crap on USA health care I have a polar opposite
accedcdote.

Last time I was at my general doctor, I was in the room for an hour with Doc
and nurse. Talking about how I’m eating, how I feel after running long
distance, if this blemish has changed shape, how I’ve been sleeping, etc etc.

It took 10 days to make an appointment which is annoying, but I have never
once felt rushed or that staff was rushed.

Like I said. Annecdote, but polar opposite.

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TeMPOraL
Yeah, I'm first to crap on US health care, but there are days I sort of
understand why things in the States are the way they are. Almost everyone I
know here (in Poland) tries to go for private care whenever they have spare
cash, because public health care is pretty unpleasant and makes you waste a
lot of time (+ you usually get scheduled for a visit many months in the
future). This can actually be more expensive than private care if you count
opportunity costs.

Recently my wife & I were forced to use the public service, and after 3 days
of traveling back & forth, day after day, to another city, being told to visit
another ward next day, and come back the day later, I was begging for someone
to throw money at to make our problem go away. And I'm not really blaming the
staff; they're all severely overworked, underequipped and underpaid. There's a
huge problem with public health care here, kind of an opposite to the US
problems. Poor or rich, you will get medical attention, just possibly months
after when it's needed.

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avgDev
I was born in Poland. Yes the system sucks but US is on another level.

Imagine visiting a hospital for an emergency, and receiving 10 bills from
different doctors totaling to few thousand dollars then fighting with
insurance to pay for it.

Universal healthcare brings OVERALL cost down. It makes private treatment
cheaper. A crown and root canal costs about $2k in the US. Plus, it is nearly
impossible to find cost of a procedure prior to it. It is fking weird.

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TeMPOraL
Uh ok. Thanks for the perspective. I guess we are better off, because private
healthcare here is straightforward and not _that_ expensive for the basics.
For a root canal here I paid maybe 200 USD in total.

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LeftTurnSignal
> For a root canal here I paid maybe 200 USD in total.

For comparison, with insurance in the US my root canal cost about $250 out of
pocket.

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TeMPOraL
I paid ~$200 with no insurance whatsoever.

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avgDev
Interesting. I looked around Chicago area and the cheapest I found was $350
just for root canal.

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rchaud
This reminds me of an episode of the '90s sitcom Frasier. In S05E24, "Sweet
Dreams", Frasier (a psychiatrist who has a call-in counseling radio show) gets
fired after refusing to voice a radio ad for a tea that guarantees happy
dreams as it veers too closely towards medical advice.

That's TV though, and Frasier was written as a character with high
professional integrity. Real life isn't so cut and dry. Some Doctors already
have a shady relationship with pharma companies.

Given everything we know about how FB makes it easy to advertise to targeted
populations (in this case, desperate people and the extremely naive), I can
see this becoming a problem 5 years down the line when these students have
completed residencies and are full-fledged doctors.

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PascLeRasc
That episode has one of my favorite lines:

Frasier: What cuisines are being fused?

Niles: Polynesian and Scandinavian. It's called Mahalo Valhalla.

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doitLP
Just another example of the major problem with pharma funding med schools,
paying for continuing medical education, paying professors and other massive
undisclosed conflicts of interest. The top med schools are some of the worst
offenders.

I wonder if any of this is correlated to negative health outcomes? Nah,
maximizing shareholder value and doing what’s best for the patient are totally
compatible.

[https://www.bostonglobe.com/news/nation/2015/08/05/doctors-l...](https://www.bostonglobe.com/news/nation/2015/08/05/doctors-
lobby-keep-lid-secrecy-industry-payments-for-medical-
education/pP9NiZVTATh2sCygbG7V8O/story.html)

[https://ethics.harvard.edu/event/drug-companies-and-
medicine...](https://ethics.harvard.edu/event/drug-companies-and-medicine-
what-money-can-buy)

[https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3778453/](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3778453/)

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tracer4201
I cringe anytime I see this phrase, "Instagram influencer". What does this
even mean? You're like the high school popular kid equivalent but on the
internet?

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stilley2
Potentially relevant from the AMA: [https://www.ama-assn.org/delivering-
care/ethics/advertising-...](https://www.ama-assn.org/delivering-
care/ethics/advertising-publicity)

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MerryMage
I'm surprised this is a thing, given a student (in the UK at least) would very
likely be referred to a professionalism tribunal for doing this. See also
paragraphs 77 to 80 of Good Medical Practice.

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petepete
Totally off-topic, but the red underlining of hyperlinks definitely keeps
tricking me into thinking they're spelling mistakes.

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rchaud
I thought the same thing. I like the typography and layout of the site
overall, but they should consider changing the color of the link underline.

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siruncledrew
Mantis Toboggan, M.D.

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AllegedAlec
> celebrity physician in some form: [...] Deepak Chopra

You wot mate? Deepak Chopra is as much a physician as I am a swimwear model.

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pjc50
He was a fairly senior, properly qualified doctor before he became a promoter
of alternative medicine.

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TheAceOfHearts
"You know what they call alternative medicine that's been proved to work?
Medicine." \- Tim Minchin

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rootusrootus
Perhaps we should get past the proof stage before we promote it on national
television to hundreds of millions of people.

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a_imho
GDPR'd

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Angostura
Oddly, if you read the privacy policy, there's this little gem:

If you are an EU reader this means that Slate is not collecting or processing
data from your current browser session. If you believe that you have
previously granted Slate access, it is possible that you did so from a
different browser. By returning to this page from that browser, you can remove
the identifying cookie.

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a_imho
Emphasis is on _current browser session_. Can't access the page without
consenting to tracking. The part you picked turns into a revoke access (opt-
out) once clicked through.

