On the “First Opinion Podcast” this week, Will Flanary — the ophthalmologist better known on social media as Dr. Glaucomflecken — returns for his second appearance. We talked about cosmetic eye color-changing surgery (“I hate it so much,” he told me), the return of “Scrubs,” the imperative for ethical doctors to be on social media — and, most of all, about his advocacy around a situation in Oregon. A hospital system in Eugene, Oregon, planned replace its community-based emergency department physician group with staffing provided by a national company. In response, Dr. Glaucomflecken and others began organizing. It’s just the most recent example of his advocacy, which uses humor to introduce his audience to stories that might not otherwise cross his radar.
“There’s a lot people in hospital administration, in health insurance, in private equity, doing bad things for patients and for doctors. And one unifying characteristic of every story … is that they don’t want people to know what’s happening. They want to keep it out of the news,” he told me. “They don’t want this kind of scrutiny because they know this is really unpopular and that maybe this isn’t the best for patient care, but it’s maybe good for pocketbooks, maybe good for other reasons that are not as altruistic.”
Listen (or watch — we now have a video podcast! Don’t judge my hair!) here.
Also: Do not miss Saturday’s First Opinion on RFK Jr. and bioethical considerations about collecting animal parts, written by someone with actual firsthand experience collecting raccoon genitals.
Recommendation of the week: The New York Times’ feature on a young woman who used an experimental synthetic drug to try to wean herself off kratom illustrates how important Reddit has become to a DIY knowledge ecosystem about gray-market drugs — for better or worse. (See also: this First Opinion from March on how people turn to Reddit for help with telehealth-prescribed ketamine.)
