Living in the city can be very stressful without proper methods to cope with the escalation of city stress. There is always noise and bright lights in the city. Stores need to keep their lights on to attract customers and the traffic lights would always need to be on for passing cars. Within my neighborhood, I would hear and see construction works, traffic, and loud music. I start my day by waking up in the morning at 7 AM. Then, I make breakfast and dress up to exercise in the park for a couple of hours. Running gives me joy knowing how many calories my body is burning. When I get home, I tidy my room and prepare myself to go to the library and work. On the way to the library, I find myself experiencing the stress of being stuck in traffic. After finding a parking space, I find myself a comfortable seat in the library and open my Tik Tok for a major stress relief.
As I logged into Tik Tok, I was greeted by the sight of a young Asian doctor with the alias @austinchiangmd. He was doing a Tik Tok dance to a viral song that explained the reasons why people should not want doctors off of Tik Tok. His reasons were that doctors on Tik Tok could provide accurate health education, give advice to the young people on their road to getting an MD or a degree in allopathic medicine, and to show how rewarding and fun being a doctor is. Apparently, he got his MD from Columbia Medical School and his videos averaged to around 100 thousands views each. I enjoyed a lot of his videos because of how dramatic he acted for each scene and maintained his information accuracy at the same time. However, I could see how some of his Tik Tok videos would garner criticism. A lot of people would prefer their doctor to be a professional and would not joke about their health situations. After all, in America the cost of receiving a health check-up is very expensive. Therefore, people would want the best access to quality check-ups for their ailments.
I admit there had been a lot of precedence of pure disrespect to the patients by previous Tik Tok doctors. Certain nurses like D Rose posted a video making fun of patients and assuming that patients are faking their diseases. This video received a lot of backlash from the Tik Tok community and damaged the reputation of Tik Tok doctors. Patients go to doctors and pay a lot of money for their check-ups because they feel something is wrong with their body. Rose’s video would make the people who are in need of a check-up afraid of going to the doctor for the fear that the medical professionals would not believe their words and make fun of their symptoms.
However, I do believe the banning and discrimination of doctors against posting a video in Tik Tik is too extreme. Instead, there should be more regulation on Tik Tok that monitors the contents posted by the users. For extremely offensive videos, users should have easy access to report the video. After all, the offensive contents posted by health professionals could damage the credibility and people’s trust in educational and helpful contents by other health professionals who want to lead a positive impact in the Tik Tok community.
by Naive Health Lady Lu March 6, 2020
Naive Healthy Lady Lu 