How TikTok Doctors Are Breaking Barriers
‘TikTok is our way to be accessible and transparent — to connect with people’
Dr. Magnolia Printz, a 38-year-old Wisconsin-based anesthesiologist, stumbled across TikTok in late 2019. She’d always liked dancing, and karaoke was a big part of her Filipino culture, but she soon became strategic about using 15-second videos and trending soundbites to educate people about the world of medicine.
“Another one of my doctor friends used it to talk about vaping, so I saw there was an educational opportunity,” Printz says.
Seizing the opportunity worked. Printz, who works in private practice and at a local hospital, has more than 300,000 followers, many of them high school or college students who want to learn more about how to become a doctor. “My pain point at first was to demystify anesthesia, but then people started asking me med school questions,” she says. “Those are easy!”
As her platform grows, Printz hopes to continue breaking barriers between doctors and patients, and between medicine and people who want to pursue it. I talked to her about how she balances her TikTok fame with her work, what she hopes to accomplish with her social media presence, and how TikTok can be an earnest way for doctors to connect with people — including themselves.
