Clad in a plain yellow shirt, black slacks and sensible shoes, Dr. Andrea Furlan stands in front of a white, unadorned wall in her home, looks straight into her smartphone camera and addresses her viewers: "My name is Andrea Furlan. I'm a specialist in physical medicine and rehabilitation. Today, I'm going to talk about osteoporosis."
So begins the simple video that, three years ago, turned its slightly tentative creator into a YouTube powerhouse with nearly 700,000 followers.
From the moment you hit play on one of Dr. Furlan's videos, it's clear she isn't like most YouTubers who do wild stunts, cook crazy meals or unbox children's toys. Her videos are more community television style, complete with rudimentary graphics — far from the slick production many professional streamers employ today.
And, while you likely wouldn't call her an influencer, with many of her videos getting millions of views, she is certainly influential.
The unlikely YouTuber also has a day job that doesn't involve endorsement deals or rubbing shoulders with celebrities. She's a staff physician at UHN's Toronto Rehabilitation Institute, Senior Scientist at UHN's KITE Research Institute and professor in the Department of Medicine at the University of Toronto.
So how did a Toronto doctor end up producing 349 videos and counting that attract fans from around the world?
Patients are calmer, less tired and able to retain more
Dr. Furlan's journey began in early 2019, when, having just turned 50, she started thinking about writing a book. A practicing physiatrist for more than 30 years, she specializes in diagnosing the various causes of physical pain and developing comprehensive, patient-centred treatment plans.
Over the course of her long career, she had accrued a great deal of knowledge about the body's pain system, and, while she was already sharing this knowledge through her various roles as an educator, scientist and physician, she felt she could do more.
When she told her son, who was 17 at the time, that she wanted to write a book about managing chronic pain so she could help more people, his response surprised her a little.
"He said, 'Mom, don't write a book. Just open a YouTube channel,'" she recalls.
Initially, Dr. Furlan balked at the idea. She worried that if she became a YouTuber she might be associated with the unaccredited, less-than-noble content creators out there who claim they can cure chronic pain with dubious products or techniques. She also wondered what her medical colleagues would think.
But she could see an immediate upside, too.
"In my clinic, there's never enough time to teach my patients what I want them to know," she says. "I realized if I made videos of what I wanted to teach my patients, they could go home and watch me giving the extra education that I wanted to give them in the clinic, and they'd be calmer, less tired and able to [retain] more."
