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Dr. Erin Nance: using social media to spotlight misdiagnosis and build a trusted health platform
Summary
Orthopedic surgeon Dr. Erin Nance discusses her path to surgery, personal and patient stories of delayed diagnosis, the '31 for 31' awareness campaign, and her platform Feel Better to connect patients with verified health information.
Dr. Erin Nance described how a childhood injury and family experiences shaped her career, and how she now uses social media to educate and advocate for better recognition of conditions often missed in women.
Dr. Erin Nance, a board-certified orthopedic surgeon and author of Little Misdiagnosed, told host Nancy Barrow that a fall at age 7 and a later family medical crisis guided her decision to become a surgeon and later to put medical education on social platforms. She said she intentionally adopted ‘‘storytelling’’ as a method of education online and worked with a social media company called Hookpoint to develop formats that reach broad audiences.
The podcast highlighted Dr. Nance’s disease-awareness work, including a ‘‘31 for 31’’ campaign on commonly misdiagnosed conditions in women that helped grow her audience dramatically. Dr. Nance also discussed her own post-COVID diagnostic delay and emphasized a broader problem: she said medical research historically underrepresented women and asserted that women are ‘‘twice as likely to die after having a heart attack than men,’’ a point she used to explain why symptoms in women are often labeled ‘‘atypical.’’
Dr. Nance said Feel Better exists to provide a trusted, verified source of medical information so patients can bring better-informed questions to clinicians. She said the platform’s purpose is to create ‘‘guardrails’’ on social media and to amplify credible content so patients ‘‘do not feel alone.’’
The conversation included personal stories from Dr. Nance’s book Little Misdiagnosed and a description of her brother Kevin’s recovery journey, which shaped her commitment to patient-family communication. Dr. Nance said her current focus includes highlighting innovations, diagnostics and treatments and connecting people to credible resources.
The episode closed with a reminder that verified resources exist online and an invitation to listeners to seek help and information through platforms and official program sites.
