Medfluencers and Patient Education: Helpful or Risky?

How future doctors are navigating social media’s impact on public education. How can a well-meaning medfluencer be sure they’re actually helping? M1 Zach Grissom, M2 Fallon Jung, M3 Jeff Goddard, and M4 Matt Engelken sit down with third-year DO student Nik Bletnitsky to discuss the role of social media in medical education. Current and Future doctors are increasingly using these platforms to share medical knowledge—but, even if you’re careful to offer the best information, what are the hidden dangers? The conversation covers the sometimes blurry line between education, misinformation, and contradicting someone’s doctor’s advice. How disclaimers work (or don’t), and why the Dunning-Kruger effect can turn a curious patient into an overconfident self-diagnoser. Should doctors be influencers? Can patients trust what they see online? And is it possible to make medical knowledge accessible without accidentally making things worse? More about our guest: @nikbletnitsky https://www.tiktok.com/@nikbletnitsky We Want to Hear From You: YOUR VOICE MATTERS! We welcome your feedback, listener questions, and shower thoughts. Do you agree or disagree with something we said today? Did you hear something really helpful? Can we answer a question for you? Are we delivering a podcast you want to keep listening to? Let us know at https://theshortcoat.com/tellus and we’ll put your message in a future episode. Or email [email protected]. The Short Coat Podcast is FeedSpot’s Top Iowa Student Podcast, and its Top Iowa Medical Podcast! Thanks for listening! We do more things on… Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/theshortcoat YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/theshortcoat You deserve to be happy and healthy. If you’re struggling with racism, harassment, hate, your mental health, or some other crisis, visit http://theshortcoat.com/help, and send additions to the resources there to [email protected]. We love you. Music provided by Argofox. License: bit.ly/CCAttribution DOCTOR VOX – Heatstroke: youtu.be/j1n1zlxzyRE Catmosphere – Candy-Coloured Sky: youtu.be/AZjYZ8Kjgs8 Hexalyte – Wandering Hours: youtu.be/FOAo2zsYnvA