Dr. Timimi: It’s very common. Some patients have always come in with their own research, but what they come in with now reflects their perception of their own health through the lens of Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, YouTube. It’s become a prevalent issue, and it’s affecting our practice’s efficiency.
For example, many of our pediatricians struggle with losing some of that precious time to interact with the family and the child to talk about what’s important to them, to instead talk about vaccine hesitancy, to talk about why vaccines are actually beneficial. It’s concerning for us in medicine, because we have limited time available to interact with patients. I want to spend all of that time in a productive interaction, crafting a plan with the patient that will help them make that journey from illness to recovery.
When I lose some of that time trying to alleviate a misconception fostered on Facebook or YouTube, it’s disturbing — and it’s happening frequently.
MCB: Has the pandemic has heightened the number of people bringing misinformation and fringe theories to the doctor’s office?
Dr. Timimi: Yes. I think anxiety drives a lot of this. If I remember correctly, the WHO just held a meeting about this, implying that all of us are so isolated that everybody is desperate for connection and interaction. Thanks to that, we’ve seen a marked increase in misassumptions online, particularly around mask-wearing.
We know that masks lower the risk of contracting Covid by about 70 percent. I mean… there’s very few things in life that can lower the risk of something bad happening to you by 70 percent. Yet every day, I have patients that confront me in an assertive fashion with what they’ve read on Facebook or YouTube or Instagram. And it’s challenging to try to re-direct the conversation to what’s important, and make sure the patient and I are kept safe while doing so.
MCB: One thing we hear is people just don’t know what to believe. The news cycle is moving so fast, and what we know about Covid changes by the day. How would you advise patients to decide what’s real and what’s not?
Dr. Timimi: I think the key is to make sure you’re getting information from a reliable, vetted source. That’s not a celebrity on Facebook, that’s not a random YouTube video — that’s well-recognized, reliable sources. There’s medical journals that are now transparent, putting all their content online.
The American Journal of Medicine has incredibly good articles, the majority of which include a patient education module that is free online. The American Medical Association and Mayo Clinic both have large, corporate entities that exist online to provide transparent information for the patients. I would encourage patients when they find something interesting and think ‘I should learn more about this,’ to try to vet that by going to one of those major resources.
And finally, go to your providers. We’re here for you. We’re here to build a plan with you, to take you from illness to recovery. We’re more than happy to discuss anything you find online, because that’s an opportunity for us to understand your perspective, understand what you’re worried about, and by understanding that, craft a better plan for you.
MCB: Finally, Mayo has a huge following on social media, and I know hundreds of its doctors are active on their own personal pages. How can these physicians use social media platforms to quell false information before it makes it into their office?
Dr. Timimi: Well, we encourage our physicians to use social media strategically — in large part because they are our greatest resource. They are a human bandwidth that can help us expand our audience to a much larger population. We do have some general guidelines on how to post strategically, and we also offer an online course that provides continuous medical education certification for physicians and other healthcare providers.
We view these courses as tools, in the same sense that I would not take a brand-new physician, hand them a scalpel and say ‘okay, get to work on that patient.’ That physician would need orientation, guidelines and training. That’s true for any field, including social media — because for medicine, social media can be an incredibly powerful tool.
There’s something intimate about a physician and a patient in an exam room together, but it’s limited to the patient, their family, and the provider. If we can find ways to strategically extend that message to a larger audience, we can touch so many lives.
Think of something as simple as kids wearing a helmet when they go biking — that’s a simple thing, right? It’s something that pediatricians will talk about with kids in an exam room every spring… if you go biking, make sure to wear a bike helmet, that it fits comfortably on your head, one finger-breadth between your chin and the chin strap, simple things. That’s a five-minute conversation. If that pediatrician can film the conversation and post it on YouTube, it could reach hundreds or thousands of people. If you can keep one child from a catastrophic injury, ones that may not be able to see a pediatrician because of financial or time limitations… my God, that’s powerful!
