Science and lolz: How Canadian doctors are battling misinformation online

If you spend any time on social media, you’ve probably seen plenty of medical misinformation and wellness influencers.

The old aphorism claims “laughter is the best medicine,” but the Canadian Medical Association hopes that laughter is also a powerful weapon against online misinformation and disinformation.

The group representing the nation’s doctors has been working with influencers within their ranks, while developing its own team of communicators, physicians, nurses, and others to explain everything from the extended medical coverage to adult ADHD diagnoses.

“It’s a real skill set to be able to explain things in the types of language that anybody will understand,” said Dr. Joss Reimer, past-president of the CMA and frequent contributor to the cheeky videos found on Instagram, TikTok, YouTube and Threads.

“We need to make sure that we’re interesting enough that people are engaging and wanting to watch videos and wanting to understand what we have to say, while still making sure that you are providing the evidence, that you are making sure that your advice is sound,” she said of the Healthcare for Real channels.

Nothing too taboo for a reel

The advice from the presenters – some of whom are professional social media communicators, others frontline medical providers – ranges from “stop doomscrolling” over the climate crisis and its health impacts, to “don’t put any strange things in your vagina.”

And while they incorporate meme culture, movie clips, and general silliness, the humourous digs at “wellness” culture and its profit motive shouldn’t be trivialized.

“There’s all these different incentives for people to monetize misinformation and really very few guardrails to protect against it,” said Wes Regan, a PhD candidate at UBC’s School of Community and Regional Planning who studies the impacts of conspiratorial beliefs and online misinformation on public policy.

He applauded the Healthcare for Real strategy, pointing out “it comes off as authentic, which I think is important because a lot of the issues of trust often boil down to people feeling that these large institutions are these distant, opaque, big machines they often don’t understand.”

Memes and frontline providers featured

Vancouver family physician Dr. Rita McCracken is a regular contributor to the CMA’s social channels and bases some of her own videos on interactions she has with patients in her examination room.

“I’ve been super surprised at some of the videos of mine that have taken off – I have one about constipation that tens of thousands of people watch and I’m like, ‘Really? OK, great!’” she told CTV News between patient appointments.

McCracken recognizes that with so many people without a family doctor, or feeling rushed when they do see a physician, her social media content may be the most reliable information they see, even though she regularly cautions that it’s not medical advice.

“I’m glad to have a chance to speak to folks and to use my training and my ability to parse through the evidence,” she said. “I wish that we had standards that were ensuring that more of the information that people are getting exposed to was real and fact-based versus, very often, just a way to sell somebody something.”

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For Reimer, it’s not just about saving patients money on snake oil or wasting time on home remedies that are ineffective.

“Earlier this year I was doing a shift at women’s hospital and we had a patient who was having a really serious bleed after having a baby,” she recalled. “(The patient) declined to receive blood because she was afraid of getting vaccinated blood, so this became a very life-or-death situation for this individual because of misinformation.”