Injecting humour into healthcare with Dr Karan Rajan

Dr Karan Rajan – Q&A at the YouTube Health Creators Community UK event

I attended the UK YouTube Health Creator Community event which featured Dr Vishaal Virani, Head of Health at YouTube UK and Ireland. And a Q&A with Dr Karan Rajan who has over 2.1 million subscribers on YouTube.

Grab a hot (or cold) drink and enjoy learning from Dr Karan’s experience as a Health Creator on YouTube.

I love sharing my notes from the session so everyone can learn about the impact and business of being a Health Creator – 100% NOT generated by AI.

Key takeaways from Vishaal

As a small creator on YouTube, you can still reap the benefits of having a channel
Thumbnail testing on YouTube is now available
Record using YouTube Live, then split up your video into shorter clips (over 60 seconds)

How Dr Karan Rajan started his YouTube journey

Started YouTube journey in 2012 when he was still a medical student
Noticed there were no high quality videos about OSCE’s – made videos to help students with fellow students in medical school
Changed to public health information during the pandemic (about 10 years later)
Aimed at a general audience as clinicians are a small audience
Now dabbling in traditional recipes from India
“I create whatever I want and hope other people enjoy it – not what the public wants – and I believe this is the best way to go about it as it reduces the chance of burning out or falling out of love of creating content”.

Process to create videos and how Karan think of ideas

There’s no such thing as a bad idea, just a bad execution, and even worse than a bad execution is no execution
I’ve got a Word Document with dead ideas – it’s too late to do anything with them – I should have done them when they were trending or in season.
We fall into a paradox of too much choice – like staring at a wall of cereal in a supermarket
The first step is deciding to put stuff out there
Shorten the bridge between having the idea and executing
Do not obsess pathologically over the perfect piece of content or the perfect idea that will go viral
Now my flow of creating content has hit a sort of critical mass – a lot of people send me content to review, to debunk, to give my opinion on
But when I was starting out, I would spend 30 minutes scrolling through short videos (Shorts on YouTube, TikTok videos, Instagram Reels) to see any videos which caught my interest/attention – inspiration does not need to come from a health or science video
Put your own spin on any type of video
Alternatively get ideas from anything which inspires you in your day to day life e.g. going to the gym or taking creatine supplements or the news like recalling foods with E. coli, why you should wear sunscreen with a specific UV index etc
There is an unlimited amount of medicine out there – so we should never run out of content – we will never know even 1% of it
There’s loads of content out there to be explored

How have you fit in the creation of the content while doing all the other things you do?

Short videos do not need to be curated or have high production value
There are so many apps that generate captions, such as CapCut
If you have long form content then you can cut that up – like a 20 minute long video you can create 10 clips
For my long podcast episodes I get around 4 or 5 clips out of it
Software/AI tools can clip videoes for you and resize videos such as OpusClips (it’s a free/paid model)

How often should you post?

Have some sort of cadence to your posting schedule – don’t have to post every day or every week
Have an idea about frequency
As busy healthcare professionals, you can batch create videos. In my early days, at the weekend I would spend 2 to 3 hours on Saturdays and Sundays making content – I would make 7 or 8 pieces of content that I put out there
Low hanging fruit easy content – when you first post a video, you can reply to each comment with a video – that helps build community and drive a lot of traffic. Those questions other people ask are likely to be relatable so more people will watch them.

I love the humour you add to your videos – how much comes naturally to you and how much have you developed from your dedication to making videos?

I like to make things fun for myself and the audience
Over time you figure out what works
You have to draw a line between being authentic and injecting some fun into videos because at the end of the day the difficulty health creators have is you can’t be too boring, science is and can be a very boring place if you just give the plain facts
But also I do not want to put jokes in just for the sake of it
Whatever works for you – develop your own style
But there are lots of creators that don’t have any humour in their content and still do well
Humour does not need to be in every single video, and it depends on the topic as well. You have to pick and choose.
For example, talking about bowels I may include some toilet humour, but talking about women’s health the humour is not so easy to place in there (if at all).

As clinician creators, we’re very public figures, and with that comes hate comments – racist, sexist, homophobic, attacks about our credibility/credentials. How do you deal with that with a sense of decorum and put your foot down, and how do you make sure it doesn’t affect your mental health when you are creating content and putting that out there, especially as a beginner health content creator?

It’s inevitable that you will get some vitriol
It only increases with time and a growing fan base
99% of the time these people do not want to personally attack you, they just want to troll you – they are looking for a reaction
There’s no point responding – so do not engage with someone who wants to fight
If it’s a debate, you can have a discussion, there’s no value in a very long comment discussion
If someone in my comments section talks about me (in a negative way), I just hide the user from the YouTube channel. Then nobody can see their comment and they do not know I’ve hidden them from the channel – they’ve said their piece – and everyone wins.
You can restrict people on Instagram too.
Your energy needs to be on creating content.
If you put something out there and it’s wrong – then people will come to your aid – for example I do not respond to people who stitch my videos. Someone (non-clinician) tried to troll me and all the comments were defending me , even his own fans.

The easy part for me is filming, the hard part is being an editor. How do you have time to edit? Do you outsource?
I find long videos overwhelming to edit, and short videos easier.

It used to take me 10 to 20 hours to edit a 12 minute video in my early days.
I have an editor for long form stuff
For short form stuff I do it myself
If you want to be a sustainable content creator, then you want to see how much you can delegate to, like, a personal assistant, secretary, video editor – so you can focus on the creative side of things and be the best version of you.
I’m not an editor, but if I could find an editor that edits my Shorts the same way I edit them then I would delegate that.

Is there a topic you steer clear from because it is too complex and doesn’t lend itself to a short form video? Have you had any issues due to not covering certain caveats or nuances in a short video because you are trying to cram top line information?

I think people should understand that inherently when someone makes a short form video it’s not a deep dive into a topic. There is no topic in the world where you can do a 360 coverage of it in 60 or 90 seconds
I like to talk about anything, but think about what you have to gain when you talk about a certain topic
There are certain topics that are very polarising and very divisive and you can land yourself in a lot of trouble either way – you can even split your audience
As doctors we have a different responsibility to a lay person
If I think that I am covering something controversial, then I show the video to my friends in a WhatsApp group to check it’s not “cancellation worthy” before I publish it
I suggest you have a sounding board before you publish stuff.

As you focused on creating content for healthcare professionals first, how did you move to a general audience?

When I stopped making OSCE content, I had 25 to 30,000 subscribers. I just didn’t want to do it anymore.
WhenI switched to health information for the public, in the beginning it didn’t get many views
Some people may still watch your new content
Don’t focus on the demographics of your audience, think about what you want your future audience demographics to be

References in long form video descriptions look clunky – what are your thoughts on that?

Don’t worry about reference links being clunky – I think it looks more professional, and you can put links to studies in long form YouTube videos but not in short form videos.
In short form videos, I add a comment to my own video where I put the study title and author and journal if I talk about it in the video.
I wouldn’t worry about what other people think.

What are your thoughts on collaborating with brands?

There’s plenty of opportunity on social media to make money
I think people can slightly exaggerate what they earn
People have a skewed view – they think that having a million followers is like winning a lottery ticket
The reality is more sober than that
When you collaborate with brands, understand that you are a healthcare professional and in the UK – compared to the US or other countries out there – there are very strict guidelines imposed on us by the GMC to avoid bringing the profession into disrepute
(Virginia’s note: there are also regulations on what you can and cannot say about medicines)
For example if you’re a doctor and started doing adverts with an alcohol brand, that doesn’t look great. Or stuff with a supplement company – think: what’s the message you are sending out?
It’s a bit of an ethical and moral grey area, and a guidance grey area.
Look at your own brand – your credibility – for example, are you a fitness creator? What aligns with you and what have you spoken about before?
I’ve been offered a lot of money to talk about probiotics and I turned it down and made a video about how they’re not that great.
For me I think about two things: Does it align with my ethos as a creator? Is it something people will benefit from?
You need to be very selective
In my years of creating content I have made 4 sponsored videos and 3 of those were for charities (pro bono)
There is nothing wrong with wanting to make money
Get out of the idea that it’s taboo to make money
If a brand offers you a job, you need to ask for payment to be valued, otherwise if you don’t value your time you are lowering the benchmark for everyone. They need to pay you in some way.

How can an organisation like the Department of Health put out helpful content?

I think relatable content always does well
A blog with symptoms, treatment etc is a bit boring to read
Try to find a trigger point or pain point and answer that question, such as should you brush your teeth before or after breakfast?

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