Do No Harm Follows You Home

Written By Megan Kwok

I was half-mindedly scrolling through Instagram when I liked a video of a man chopping vegetables, flipping food in a pan, captioned "Me cooking for my neurosurgeon wife after she buys me her dream car after her 17-hour shift." I found it funny, even, maybe, feminist in its inversion of the usual script of the man being the breadwinner. The man in the video was Nick Baumel, a 27-year-old final-year medical student at the Mayo Clinic. At the time he posted that video, he had 221,000 followers and a reputation for content that was, by the standards of medical TikTok, genuinely original. 

A few weeks later, I was watching a different kind of video: a screen recording of two of his TikToks, played back in disbelief by people across medical social media, alongside a statement from Mayo Clinic saying his content did not reflect its values or the standards it expected of its students. A few days after the controversy, he had deleted everything. His account was gone.

The videos at the centre of the controversy were not subtle. One, titled "when you're on your 3rd catheter attempt," was set to audio saying, “Clitoris? Labia majora? Damn, girl, how many pussies you got?” Another, captioned to imply a friend might have a yeast infection, was soundtracked by lyrics about sending explicit images. If you work in medicine, or if you've ever been a patient, the clinical context only makes them worse. A Foley catheter insertion is one of the most intimate and frequently distressing procedures a patient can undergo, and the women lying on those tables are not props.

The response was immediate and vast. On Reddit's r/medicalschool, threads ran for hundreds of comments. Dr. Will Flanary, better known as Dr. Glaucomflecken, with over 800,000 followers and perhaps the most prominent voice in medical comedy, put in a now-deleted comment that he was, "not going to let it slide". He was measured in his verdict, saying that the content "earned the anger it received," but Baumel should not lose his career over it. "This is not a 'lose your career' level mistake," he wrote. "You can learn where the lines are."1

Dr. Jennifer Lincoln, an OB/GYN with a substantial platform of her own, was less forgiving, saying explicitly that she had contacted Mayo Clinic about the situation and hoped Baumel would receive the punishment he deserved.2 Dr. Jordan Emont, a male OB/GYN who published a Substack piece the day after the controversy peaked, went further still, placing Baumel's videos alongside the same week's news of a comprehensive investigation into Columbia University's OB/GYN department, where Dr. Robert Hadden had assaulted over 200 patients across a 20-year career. The situations were, Emont was careful to say, not equivalent in severity, but both show the failures of institutional guards to protect women from problematic men in medicine. He worried, specifically, that Baumel's joke could calcify into a clinical habit, that a man who found female anatomy funny online might become a doctor who diagnoses women's symptoms as "just anxiety".3

A second-year medical student who identified as a woman wrote at length about 2,000 years of medical dismissal of female bodies, asking, "When is making fun of women and our genitalia as a clinician a deal-breaker?" A fifth year resident doctor wrote that the joke "sets us back five steps with public trust" with patients who already struggle to feel comfortable during gynaecological care. A third-year medical student noted that in her OB/GYN preparation week, a male peer had complained about "missing out on learning experiences" because female patients didn't want him in the room. The video, she said, showed a clear failure to understand the power differential between clinician and patient.4

Dr Liz Zhang-Velten, a radiation oncologist, put it with precision. "No individual doctor in 2026 can or should shoulder the burden of this frankly, horrific history, but to ignore the history and current-day inequities of the profession you've chosen is reckless." The history of obstetrics and gynaecology cannot just be overlooked. That a fourth-year medical student at one of America's most prestigious institutions could post that content and not immediately anticipate its reception suggests either extraordinary naivety or a comfortable confidence in getting away with it.5

But here is where the story gets more complicated. Because as Baumel's content was being discussed as evidence of a crisis in medical professionalism, many watchers found evidence of nurse creators across TikTok making videos with the same audio. One, captioned by a male nurse, read “POV: the first time I had to catheterise a female”. The same audio and visual gag, yet significantly less backlash.

One Reddit poster pointed out that a urologist who had publicly condemned Baumel had a pinned post titled "things I've pulled out of urethras." Another observed that nurse content creators routinely post skits about drug-seeking behaviour, which is, by any definition, making fun of patients, to widespread acclaim. A first-year medical student summarised the pattern with some irritation, saying, "What is and isn't acceptable to post seems to be highly variable among professions." I don’t believe this to be an argument in Baumel's defence, but a question about who gets caught in the outrage, and why. The answer seems to be: whoever is most exposed, whose content has gone most viral, and who has managed to alienate the most powerful constituency in the medical ecosystem.6

And then there were the voices who thought the pile-on had simply become its own problem. Dr. Nicole, a Chicago-based resident who trained in the UK, posted her own response: "I don't condone the video at all, but I do worry for his mental health. He's just one kid and I really hope he's okay."8 Illyaas, a medfluencer (a portmanteau of medical student and influencer), second-year at UCLMS, and friend of mine, made two videos about the controversy and landed on a line I haven't been able to stop thinking about: "The ethical pillar of non-maleficence, to do no harm, follows you home."7

The debate around Baumel has mostly been conducted as a question of punishment. As it turns out, Mayo Clinic did expel him, a decision that has been highly contested on social media. But Illyaas identified something more fundamental. Non-maleficence isn't a workplace policy or a social media guideline, but a principle you carry, applying to not only a woman on your ward, but also to a woman imagined in a TikTok sound.

What nobody seems to want to say plainly is that the medfluencer economy, or rather, the attention economy in general, rewards escalation. Illyaas noted that Baumel had "gotten away with dancing on the line before." A treadmill video, in which he mimed running away from different viruses, including HIV, received 46 million views. The cooking video I liked received enough engagement to keep him in the algorithm. The catheter video was not an aberration, but the logical next step in a content strategy optimising, as all content strategies do, for more. Bigger sound, bigger reaction, bigger number. The line exists to be approached, and then approached again.

This is not a problem unique to medicine. In 2022, Goldman Sachs and Bank of America were removing TikToks posted by junior employees and interns, reminding employees they were "not anonymous online" and that their actions could "reflect negatively on the firm."8 Mayo Clinic, when it finally responded, said something almost identical.9 But medicine is not finance. The gap between an embarrassing video and a dangerous attitude is smaller when the subject matter isn't quarterly earnings but a woman's body in a clinical setting. 

Randomly Medicine, a family medicine physician with a significant following of his own, posted a video laying out several cases from his career in direct response to the Baumel controversy. First, a medical student expelled for faking illness who turned out to have been deceiving people in far more serious ways; second, a nurse whose innuendos and jokes about attractive patients preceded years of sexual assault. "I don't tolerate jokes about genitalia, sexual innuendos, inappropriate behaviour," he said. "We see where it can potentially lead." His point was not that Baumel is those men, but that small normalisations have large and dangerous trajectories.10

However, there is also a structural gap. The GMC's social media guidance, which requires doctors to ensure their conduct justifies patients' trust in the profession, doesn't apply to medical students. Medical schools set their own policies, variably and inconsistently.11 The Medical Defence Union, the UK's largest medical defence organisation, recently clarified that its indemnity is unlikely to cover content published by its members. There is no media training in most medical curricula.12 What there is, instead, is a generation of students who have grown up understanding visibility as a professional asset, what with the immense wealth of influencers and the overwhelming public sentiment on the importance of having a “personal brand”, now entering a profession built on discretion, with no one having sat down to explain the collision that was coming.

What the Baumel controversy lays bare is a contract medicine never clearly wrote but now expects everyone to honour: that clinicians and medical students may exist on social media, may be human and relatable and even funny, but must remain on the correct side of an invisible line which separates acceptable professional self-expression from content that undermines public trust or compromises patient dignity. It is not written down anywhere. It shifts depending on who's watching, it’s applied inconsistently across professions and genders, and it has been made progressively harder to walk as engagement metrics reward the bold and punish the bland.

I keep returning to the cooking video. To the small, ordinary fact that I liked it, that I found a man funny and warm and, maybe, just a little subversive before I found him harmful. These things were both true, apparently, at the same time, and that's not a comfortable thing to sit with.

What we do know is that the next version of this controversy is already being filmed. Somewhere, a medical student is editing a video, choosing a trending audio, trying to find the edge of the line – not because they're a bad person, but because that's what the platform rewards. The algorithm doesn't care about the history of medical misogyny. It cares about watch time.

Medical social media promised to close the distance between clinicians and the public, to make medicine feel accessible and trustworthy. And it has, in many cases, done exactly that. Influencers like Dr Glaucomflecken and Dr. Mike have changed how people think about healthcare systems through comedy. There is real public health value in content that makes people feel less afraid of a diagnosis. But the same mechanics that make all of that possible also make the failures spectacular, and the patients are the ones who are affected the most.

Do no harm follows you home. It follows you to the comment section, and the drafts folder, and the three seconds you spend deciding whether to post. It follows you into the room where a woman is lying on a table, trying to trust you. If you can't hold that in your mind when you're making content, you probably can't hold it in your mind when it matters.

Read the rest of the edition here.

References

1. Various commenters. r/medicalschool: Hot take — schools should have rules against med influencing during medical school [Internet]. Reddit; 2026 Mar [cited 2026 Apr 23]. Available from: https://www.reddit.com/r/medicalschool/comments/1rodnr0/hot_take_schools_should_have_rules_against/
2. Lincoln J [drjenniferlincoln]. TikTok video on Nick Baumel controversy [Internet]. TikTok; 2026 Mar [cited 2026 Apr 23]. Available from: https://www.tiktok.com/@drjenniferlincoln/video/7614211971176467743
3. Emont J. The men who fall short: on male medical professionals who harm women and the institutions that enable them [Internet]. Substack: Dr Jordan Emont; 2026 Mar 15 [cited 2026 Apr 23]. Available from: https://drjordanemont.substack.com/p/men-medicine-and-institutions
4. Various commenters. r/medicalschool: Y’all know which med student influencer they are [Internet]. Reddit; 2026 Mar [cited 2026 Apr 23]. Available from: https://www.reddit.com/r/medicalschool/comments/1rnrfyx/yall_know_which_med_student_influencer_they_are/
5. Zhang-Velten L [radiation.doc]. TikTok video responding to Nick Baumel controversy [Internet]. TikTok; 2026 Mar [cited 2026 Apr 23]. Available from: https://www.tiktok.com/@radiation.doc/video/7616531954837523726
6. Various commenters. r/medicalschool: My two cents on med student influencers as a [physician] [Internet]. Reddit; 2026 Mar [cited 2026 Apr 23]. Available from: https://www.reddit.com/r/medicalschool/comments/1ry58j4/my_two_cents_on_med_student_influencers_as_a/
7. Illyaas [illy4show8]. Instagram reel: response to Nick Baumel controversy, part 2 [Internet]. Instagram; 2026 Mar [cited 2026 Apr 23]. Available from: https://www.instagram.com/illy4show8/reel/DV6Nbz5jGSX/
8. Chiglinsky K, Saraiva C. Gen Z shows TikTok what life’s like on Wall Street, where confidentiality is key [Internet]. Bloomberg; 2022 Aug 24 [cited 2026 Apr 23]. Available from: https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2022-08-24/gen-z-on-wall-street-tell-all-tiktok-posts-create-a-conundrum-for-the-big-banks
9. Mayo Clinic. Statement regarding student social media content [Internet]. Mayo Clinic; 2026 Mar [cited 2026 Apr 23]. Available from: https://www.instagram.com/mayoclinic/
10. Randomly Medicine [randomlymedicine]. TikTok video: professionalism in the medical field [Internet]. TikTok; 2026 Mar [cited 2026 Apr 23]. Available from: https://www.tiktok.com/@randomlymedicine/video/7616823769310563614
11. General Medical Council. Using social media as a medical professional [Internet]. GMC; 2024 [cited 2026 Apr 23]. Available from: https://www.gmc-uk.org/professional-standards/professional-standards-for-doctors/using-social-media-as-a-medical-professional
12. Medical Defence Union. Medical influencers: navigating social media as doctors [Internet]. MDU; 2024 Jan 30 [cited 2026 Apr 23]. Available from: https://www.themdu.com/guidance-and-advice/guides/medical-influencers-navigating-social-media-as-doctors