Doctor Mike👁 Image
is the web channel of Dr. Mikhail Varshavski, a.k.a. "Doctor Mike", a Russian-born doctor who makes medical fact-checking and reaction videos. He also hosts a podcast where he chats with various people — often public figures or other doctors — about a variety of medical topics.
Doctor Mike provides examples of:
- A Rare Sentence: "Don't eat your friend's colon. Never thought I'd say that on this channel."
- Berserk Button: One of his major ones is when characters in TV shows use a defibrillator first before or without even doing chest compressions to revive people who suffered a cardiac arrest, and for that matter, people who perform chest compressions improperly. He regularly admits his half-serious, half-joking need to stress every time he sees improper chest compressions out of concern for setting a precedent, and even if there's a production-related issue for why (namely actors not wanting to damage the chest or ribs of real actors merely pretending to be pulseless), he'll still call it out for the inaccuracynote he's repeatedly pointed out that in most cases, the scenes are set up in a way where it would be relatively easy to use a mannequin in place of the actor so there wouldn't be an injury concern.Mike: We have humans turning into robots, and robots turning into animals, and we can't fake a chest compression on a human body?
- Bilingual Bonus: Since Mike's first language was Russian, he's able to translate Russian speech from TikTok videos and the like. (He does have more difficulty reading written Russian because he had only just started learning to read Russian before his family emigrated to the United States where all his further schooling was in English.)
- Catchphrase: Mike has several:
- PeeWoop!
- "Chest compressions, chest compressions, chest compressions!"
- "And as always, stay happy and healthy!"
- Celebrity is Overrated: Zig-zagged. When Mike first became famous (due to some social media photos going viral), he had hoped that this would give him a platform to talk about the things he cared about, only to find that he was treated solely as "the hot doctor" and no one seemed interested in discussing serious medical topics with him. This inspired him to start his own YouTube channel so he could talk about the things that were important to him instead of being stuck in situations where other people were driving the conversation away from those subjects, allowing him to build his own celebrity brand around the things that actually matter to him.
- CPR: Clean, Pretty, Reliable: Deconstructed. Dr. Mike readily acknowledges that CPR is none of these things, but also points out that in the vast majority of cases, if a person is in a situation where CPR would be indicated (no pulse and not breathing), there's nothing anyone can do that would make things worse, so it's worth attempting CPR anyway. (The one exception he explicitly mentions is that if the patient was already close to death even before their heart stopped — for example, someone in a hospital due to a late-stage terminal illness — then it may be more humane to just let them go rather than subject them to the additional pain just to prolong the inevitable.) He also points out on numerous occasions that people spontaneously reviving from CPR alone is actually uncommon and that this isn't what CPR is for — the point of CPR is to keep blood circulating in the body in order to prolong the window where they can be revived by other medical means.
- Crossover: Did a few crossovers with LegalEagle, one on an episode of Grey's Anatomy, another on an episode of Law & Order, and another on an episode of The Good Doctor. The pair deemed the Law & Order episode relatively accurate on both legal and medical fronts, particularly by TV standards, but were far more critical of the Grey's Anatomy and The Good Doctor episodes.
- Curb-Stomp Battle: His match with iDubbbz at Creator Clash saw Mike completely dominating his fellow influencer. Also applies to his losing effort against MMA fighter Chris Avila, who had way more fighting experience.
- Determinator: One of Dr. Mike's podcast episodes features Sophie Grace Holmes, a woman with cystic fibrosis who was repeatedly told her days were numbered but refused to accept it or give up on her life. Appearing on the podcast at age 33 (and more than a decade after she was given 2 years to live), Sophie described how she has dedicated her life to defying the odds and doing all the things people told her she'd never be able to do, including setting a new world record for the most consecutive marathons run by a person with cystic fibrosis.
- Gentle Giant: Mike's Newfoundland dog Bear. As is typical for the breed, he's massive for a dog (about 130 pounds which is actually on the low end of average for an adult Newfoundland) but is a very calm dog who doesn't have an aggressive bone in his body. Mike even stated at one point that he was in the process of getting Bear certified as a hospital visiting dog (dogs that are brought into hospitals to help keep patients' spirits up) before the COVID-19 Pandemic interfered. From the videos he's posted, his second Newfoundland Rib (who is actually bigger than Bear) appears to be trending in the same direction, though Mike hasn't discussed his temperament at length the way he has with Bear's.
- Is There a Doctor in the House?: Doctor Mike was on board an international flight when a fellow passenger had a severe allergic reaction👁 Image
at about the worst possible time (when the plane was over the Atlantic Ocean, over an hour away from the nearest airport). Fortunately, he was able to handle the emergency so well that the flight didn't even have to be diverted. He's since become an advocate for requiring all planes to carry epinephrine auto-injectors, pointing out that with the setup the plane had (they did have epinephrine on board, but only in vials in the cardiac response kit), the passenger could have been totally out of luck if a trained doctor hadn't been on board, while EpiPens and similar devices are designed to be easy to operate even for an ordinary person with no medical training. - Jewish and Nerdy: He's of Soviet-Jewish ancestry and is a practicing physician and medical expert.
- Late to the Punchline: In some of his meme videos, he has difficulty figuring out jokes, particularly those involving complex wordplay, sometimes requiring multiple hints from his editor to put the pieces together. He usually gets it eventually, but most viewers will figure them out long before he does. It's almost turned into a Running Gag, with the channel even putting together a compilation👁 Image
of his most memorable meme difficulties. This is probably at least in part because his first language isn't English. - Magical Defibrillator: Mentioned and debunked on multiple occasions; fictional characters shocking a flatline is very nearly a Berserk Button for him.
- Missing Mom: Dr. Mike's mother died prior to him starting his channel, which he's discussed in several videos.
- Running Gag: In his review of The Magic School Bus episode "Inside Ralphie", he constantly mistakes Liz for a random dinosaur.
- Television Is Trying to Kill Us: A large component of Doctor Mike's channel is fact-checking medical dramas and videos discussing medical topics. The latter tends to get him especially riled up because while medical dramas are mostly for entertainment and aren't meant to be taken as factual (although he's still going to make very, very sure that people understand that these are not accurate depictions of the medical world), the short videos he reacts to are often presenting information as fact if not outright giving advice.
- Tempting Fate: He references several times that saying "quiet" in a hospital is basically asking for all hell to break loose.
- Why Did It Have to Be Snakes?: Spiders are this for Doctor Mike; by his own admission, he once wrecked his car because he freaked out so badly upon seeing a spider was in the car with him that he lost his awareness of the road and didn't realize he'd gotten out of his lane until he crashed right into a parked car.