Anyone who thinks that social media is just for entertainment may be missing out on a lot of useful information. The resident physician in Pediatrics at the University Hospital Thiago Dutra, 25 years old, uses social networks as an information tool, combined with entertainment. “So whoever enters for a funny video, will search and find the ones with more meaningful content. And vice versa”, he explains.
Pediatrician is also Tiktoker in Canoas
Photo: PAULO PIRES/GES
The young man came in February of this year from Campos dos Goytacazes, in Rio de Janeiro, to do his specialization in Canoas. “I went to seven residences. I chose the HU for having a structured team in the area of Pediatrics”, he justifies. Thiago has 33.2k followers on TikTok and 26.7k on Instagram. You can find him at @dutralopez.
Autism
The pandemic and, consequently, social seclusion motivated the young man to open his Instagram to talk about autism with a focus on children’s parents. Thiago made a series with ten videos on the subject and his life turned upside down. He began to receive invitations from the City Council of his hometown, schools, companies and even television stations to talk about autism.
“Even though I was still a student, I was called and had to deepen my studies in the area”, he explains. With the projection of his name, he ended up visiting five cities in a month to speak. So he approached the author of one of the studies and went to spend time at the “Card Center For Autism and Related Disabilities” in Miami, Florida.
Thiago’s project was interrupted by the pandemic and lasted only two months. “It changed my life. I wanted to have surgery. The experience with autism made me review and I ended up choosing Pediatrics”, he says.
Blogger, Tiktoker, good student and harassed
People when exposed on social media need to face harassment from strangers. This is not Thiago’s privilege. It happens because people end up feeling close to “celebrities”. “Sometimes I’m walking in the corridor of the HU and someone I’ve never seen asks me: so, how is your mother?”, he says. Despite being weird, Thiago understands that this is part of the exhibition.
He says that when he arrived in Rio Grande do Sul, he was greeted at the airport by two followers who gave him a great hand. “I think people like to know what the routine of someone who has a profession very different from theirs is like”, he justifies. On the HU staff, he was also recognized by some as a “blogger”.
There is still a lot of prejudice in the medical field with those who do something different
There are many profiles of medical tiktokers. “There are a lot of good people, but there are also a lot of charlatans”, contextualizes the resident. When there is a pejorative comment on the networks, Thiago remembers his good grades in college, his involvement in tutoring and his time in Florida, to demonstrate his dedication to Medicine. “In the medical field itself, there is still a lot of prejudice against those who do something different”, he argues.
The young man with an easy laugh will spend three years in Rio Grande do Sul, during his medical residency. He found the cold, the food and the culture of the gauchos strange. “I used to work on a beach, hang out on the beach. The change was big. This cold makes me want to do nothing”, he says, laughing.
The time devoted to videos is not very big. Thiago usually records and edits on his cell phone, without writing scripts, in a natural way.
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