This Instagram doctor works to make trust go viral

Jeff Yoo approaches fellow doctors on the street with a camera, inviting them to share perspectives that patients may rarely hear in a consultation room.

The emergency physician has built an Instagram following of around 1.2 million in 16 months. He hopes those conversations can also reach people who no longer trust doctors, an audience he worries his profession is losing.

“I’m not going to throw away my credibility just for views and follows on a social media application,” Yoo said in an interview with The Korea Herald on Tuesday.

Yoo, 40, was born and raised in Toronto to Korean immigrant parents. He now works as an emergency physician and trauma team leader in Vancouver, British Columbia, while sharing hospital experiences, street interviews with other doctors and videos on health topics.

“People seem to really gravitate towards that,” he said of the interviews. “They seem to really like to hear the genuine perspectives of people that work in healthcare.”

His move into social media grew out of frustrations with gaps in basic health knowledge, widespread medical misinformation online and growing distrust of the healthcare system.

Since the COVID-19 pandemic, he said, medical workers in North America have encountered people who distrust doctors and hospitals, including those who believe the pandemic was a hoax. Meanwhile, he saw online content selling supplements and promising answers to people anxious about their health, with too few credible medical voices challenging misleading claims.

His father encouraged him to act, telling him he had not fully earned the right to complain unless he did something about the problems frustrating him.

Yoo decided to share his experiences and perspectives, using social media to “spread reliable health information, build trust between healthcare and the general public” and combat misinformation.

His first videos, posted in June 2025, were filmed after a chaotic night shift. Sitting in the doctors’ office with disheveled hair and a tired face, he spoke about what he loved and hated about emergency medicine.

One point focused on coordinating a team to bring a critically ill patient back from the edge of death. The nother addressed the difficulty of telling an expectant mother she was miscarrying.

The response was more positive than he had expected. Yoo believes viewers connected with the candid perspective of someone working in an emergency room.

That response has extended beyond social media.

While filming street interviews recently, Yoo noticed a woman waiting for him to finish. She told him she frequently visited the hospital and that hearing directly from doctors through his platform had helped her.

Patients and their families also recognize him during his shifts. Some later send Instagram messages thanking him for their care and telling him they felt safe, he said.

For Yoo, those encounters reinforce his original purpose amid the pressures of content creation. Algorithms encourage provocative openings and sensational claims, he said. Companies also offer money to promote their messages.

As he develops his media career, Yoo hopes it can become his main source of income, allowing him to practice emergency medicine part time.

His ideal situation would be six to eight shifts a month, with more time between them to recover, reflect on difficult cases and process what he has witnessed. He hopes that balance would allow him to arrive mentally refreshed and give patients his full attention, without depending on additional hospital shifts to pay the bills.

“When I’m with them, I’m with them and 100 percent present,” he said.

Leaving medicine, however, is not part of the plan. Caring for people in moments of vulnerability remains central to the life he wants and gives his online work its credibility.

“The whole reason that my platform is successful and resonates with people is because I’m a legitimate practicing doctor, and that’s where all my perspectives come from,” he said.