Norton Children’s talks social media medical advice
LOUISVILLE, Ky. – Dr. Heather Felton, like many doctors, has been taken aback in recent years by the amount of medical misinformation that is floating around online. So, she decided to do her part as a pediatrician to do something about it. Rather than fighting it, she chose to lean into the practice.
She took to Instagram and TikTok, producing content that is factual and based in science. She even gives out her source material and the advice she gives is free.
“This is the direction that we’re going in, at least for right now. And so we can we can try to push back on it and probably be unsuccessful, but we can also embrace it. And so that’s why I’m on social media and that’s why I talk to other health care providers about putting good information on social media so that it can be there for people when they go there to look for it,” Felton said.
Her thought process is simple – give out sound advice and interact with other doctors on the platform in order to generate traffic on topics that are approved by many physicians the world over. In doing so, she hopes to draw people away from misinformation and toward useful information that can save them time, money and the headache of having to sift through information themselves.
“I think it’s a lot of fun personally. It’s a chance to be very creative and you can interact with people. It’s also nice because there are talks that I give in an exam room like this 30 times a day, but I can record that little conversation, that spiel that I usually give and it can get 30,000 views in a day,” Felton said.
Felton encourages other medical professionals to take part in the practice, even if they don’t want to post themselves.
“If you are in health care, liking, sharing, posting, commenting on those kinds of videos, even if you aren’t making content, can also help to push that information out to more people and so all of us working together can help to disseminate good health care information out to the public,” Felton said.
