Being a Doctor and Starting a YouTube Channel — Is It ok? A Message for Anyone Out There Suppressing Their Whisper
I am as nervous writing this as I was when I first started my YouTube channel…
For years I have admired YouTubers and their channels. Specifically, their seemingly effortless bravery at bringing direct attention to themselves whilst also seemingly not having a care in the world about what others thought of them. Of course this misguided idea, that I used to have, is completely incorrect, especially as I am now… a YouTuber.
I remember the exact moment I first decided I wanted to pursue medicine as a career; I was a senior in high school trying to make a decision between enrolling in international business school or pursuing a pre-med degree that would eventually lead me to medicine. Of important note, I was never one of those docs who had dreamed of becoming a doctor since I could first babble relatively incoherent sentences. Interestingly, for a very long time, the fact that I came to medicine at a later age, actually made me feel, deep inside, like a fraud. I thought of myself as some odd nomad who was not part of the exclusive and original “I knew I would be a doctor by the age 4 years” club.
With some consolation however, I have always known I would help and be of service to others and that I would, if I could, engage in future philanthropic work. Ok, now that I have redeemed myself, I ultimately decided to step away from an international business and become a doctor. I had imagined that if I didn’t choose medicine RIGHT NOW, it would be very difficult to enter later. A huge shout out to all those who become first year medical students after age 30! Incidentally, what I have learned from those entering medicine after age 30 has been significant. Often these students had experienced life outside of school and were prepared and focused upon starting medicine with what seemed to be a better understanding of the depth and sacrifice that medicine would require from them.
The following years were blessedly and luckily relatively uneventful and gap-less as I cruised through undergrad, medical school, residency and ultimately fellowship.
I LEARNED THE MOST AMAZING THINGS and gained skills that sometimes have me shocked that I can skillfully perform them. I was gifted with the most skilled and exceptional teachers at the best of institutions who culminated in allowing me to be the doctor I am today. Further, hats off to my patients over the years who humbly helped me become a physician.
But…
Something was missing. There somehow persisted a constant gnawing at the back of my neck, or alternatively, the ever so present and consistent irritating feeling that a small grain of sand was lodged somewhere in a barely reachable part of my shoe that I could just not shake. No matter how hard I tried to hide from this feeling, it would not lose it’s grip. While I learned as much as I could about the human body and how to take care of a variety of human conditions, I had successfully ignored and suppressed what I now know to be the ever so powerful INNER WHISPER. Yes, that whisper Oprah keeps on talking about. She’s right, the more you ignore it, the higher the odds that whisper comes and crashes on you when you least expect it.
Basically, after reflection, an amazing Life Coach and thousands of hours of discussions with friends and family, I started to realize a part of what my whisper was trying to tell me. I, Tanaka Dune, full of flaws, but who had been gifted with the opportunity to attend medical school and ultimately become a pelvic surgeon (urogynecologist), an educator, researcher and a mentor was also talker/presenter and a massive supporter of disseminating information.
What I mean is the following: Firstly, I noted that individuals would come to my office, one after another, with relatively similar issues that I would try to help solve. Within this, I would often existentially wonder, how it was possible that I could hold so much information about others’ bodies in my head whilst only given an “x” amount of time to relay some of the more common and general information back to my patient in a clear and evidence-based manner. Secondly, I often felt the media was full of the worst or the best of things, and had fewer options to give voice to “the average” (sincere thanks to people like HONY who promote the stories of everyone). The moment I voiced these thought to myself, that WHISPER unleashed and came to life. Actually, it seemed to take on a life of its own. I rapidly and almost feverishly started to think of examples where 1) information seemed to me, to be cloistered and accessible only to those “in the know” (largely us in medicine), and 2) my concern that there were a whole lot more people in this world, with their own experiences, who were just as interesting (as the best or worst cases) and could help others.
Let me give you an example of my first issue— “research”, oh yes, that ever elusive “research” that is always seemingly being conducted somewhere by healthcare providers and scientists in tall majestic well-funded buildings, yet is somehow diluted and potentially distorted within the infamous “symptom Google search”. In my experience, many of my patients knew I took care of them, largely based on my having undergone specific training. Yet, many of these same patients, again in my experience, when asked, could not routinely tell me about “common” research resources that are very well known to us in the medical world.
Such resources, include reliable and trusted research databases that house peer-reviewed research articles, (i.e., PubMed) that are essential in facilitating and promoting a doctor’s continued medical education, that in turn attempts to ensure a physician’s life-long learning and the promotion of patient-centered evidence-based care. I ultimately felt a gap existed between the time allotted for the amazing one-on-one interactions I was having with my patients in the office and the ability to effectively get as much information across to the patient. My status quo would no longer suffice, if by any chance, there were other people out there who wanted to know about their bodies and the resources available.
The second issue was a lot harder for me to vocalize as I myself did not know what I meant about “giving a voice to those in the middle”. It was with the help of my life coach who organized my thought processes into better clarity. There are so many amazing people I have come across in my life who have simply blown me away, but their stories and experiences will likely never be covered in the media. I consider myself to be a person in the middle, meaning, for now, I am not experiencing fantastic tragedy, nor am I rich, wealthy, famous or powerful. These descriptions are generalities of course. It would be one of my goals to promote the stories of other people who can then also potentially help others. There is a lot to learn from the experience of becoming a clinical psychologist like my sister Dr. Tinashe Dune, or the path my coach took from working daily as a physician to helping others find their paths, among a multitude of other examples. Note, this is certainly not limited to physicians or doctors. I just need to start somewhere.
So one would think that upon realizing all of the above, and finally acknowledging my whisper, that I would act and would take advantage of the YouTube medium, which in our modern day is a major way an individual can disseminate information without depending on the hope of being “picked up” by traditional media. I did not act though. I thought I would instead, simply publish even more research papers and participate in as many clinical and non-clinical one-on-one conversations as possible (which I will continue to do of course). So for years, I simply did nothing, until, that WHISPER grew bold and screamed. By the time I decided to listen, it was somehow February 2020 and the world was shook. Honestly, I felt I had an out and I had the perfect reason to not start. I was scared. In addition to the fear, I had filled my head with the idea that I needed special equipment, pre-written scripts and scheduled content plans. Lastly, I also felt restricted by the likely non-existent “fine-line” between media and being perceived as legitimate in medicine. I knew I had to let these fears go.
So then one day, I just started my channel, seemingly, out of the blue, on February 29th 2020, I jumped out of my head and fears and posted my first video ever (and yes…it’s 12 seconds long). It was low budget and I used a $20 dollar ring light (which I later lost) and my iphone 7!
Starting a YouTube channel for me has been scary, not to mention the part about talking into a camera alone in your room “awkward”. But I realize its a journey and that there is a ton of support from other creators. It is scary to me that no one that I know specifically, in my field, is doing this with me (not including branding and campaigns associated with specific hospitals/institutions that many docs do now — click for an older institution associated video of mine), but I will persevere. At the end of the day, I have chosen to ignore a lot of these fears and not listen to them anymore, and actually give my WHISPER a chance to be heard and in the forefront. And so that said, I will try my best to disseminate information and provide a platform for the voices in the middle. I know it won’t be perfect, but I will do it, and I will “DO IT SCARED”.
