With the hope of bringing out the human side of the healthcare profession, a group of medical students began sharing stories about the lives of medicos via their social media page called Humans of Medicare.
Started by a fourth-year MBBS student Siddhant Kashyap in March 2023, the Instagram page (@humansofmedicare), has since narrated over 50 inspiring stories of healthcare professionals and in just a year, has received support from thousands of netizens.
Speaking about what inspired him to start this platform, Siddhant Kashyap, Founder, Humans of Medicare, shared, “As medical students and doctors, we come across millions of stories every day. Every patient and every doctor has a story. I have been passionate about storytelling since my childhood. I started this initiative a year ago primarily for networking and also, to impact as many lives as possible by narrating stories about healthcare workers and the impact they create.”
Some of the recent stories uploaded by the team include that of Dr Benson Benjamin, who overcame his speech issues as a child and is now an educator and a motivational speaker alongside a healthcare professional. Another story is that of Dr Nikita Nanwani, founder of Medsynapse Academy, a virtual learning platform for medical aspirants which uses 'mnemonics' for easy retention of information, and how her unofficial teaching journey during her medical externship pushed her to become an educator.
Entering the challenging field of medicine, Kashyap felt that there was an unseen side to the tales of healthcare heroes and a myriad of untold stories.
“This platform was created to sensitise people about the lives of doctors. A doctor's image is limited to a person in a white coat who treats you and gives you medicines. But doctors are more than that, they have their own lives, and their passions. While sharing these stories, we found that a few doctors are closet gamers, and others are witty content creators. There are also educators among us. Doctors wear a lot of hats and their complete picture needs to be portrayed, especially because patients never get to see the person behind their doctor."
Over a year, the Instagram page has gained more than 26,000 followers and has successfully inspired the next generation of healthcare professionals, fostering discussions and raising awareness about important healthcare issues.
The Humans of Medicare is an initiative "for the medicos, by the medicos", Siddhant said.
The team now include nine storytellers, all MBBS and BDS students — Varuni Vats (MBBS III year), Aditi Gawit (BDS I year), Shreya Gade (MBBS Final year), Disha Gujarathi (MBBS III year), Ria Maheshwari (MBBS intern), Joanne Elizabeth Roshin (MBBS Final year), Sudesh Digulkar (MBBS III year), Rudrakshi Shetty (MBBS Final year).
The platform has now expanded to two new branches — Humans of IVF, a platform that celebrates and shares stories about women who were able to achieve motherhood through the science of IVF and Miracles of Medicine, a platform for sharing success stories of patients like cancer survivors, people with rare diseases, and more.
