This Doctor's 'How Could I Ignore You?' TikTok Is Controversial

TikTok is known to feature creators from every profession, but a certain doctor is in hot water for a video about her own career.

@MursiMedical uploaded a TikTok of her questioning a patient's symptoms and concerns, expressing her desire to ignore the patient instead of working on them.

"24 year old comes in with chest pain," the text says as the video starts, going on to say that the pain radiates to their left arm. "Maybe cocaine," the doctor known as Mursi Medical says in a thought bubble.

Once the theoretical patient worries that they may be having a heart attack (after looking up symptoms on Google), Mursi lip-syncs to a song that goes "how could I ignore you?"

See the full TikTok below, and the tweet that made it viral.

Ugh. Posts like this jeopardize the public’s trust in medical professionals.

Why?

-symptoms aren’t taken seriously
-she’s profiled the person based on age
-pt may have Googled symptoms to avoid trip to ER

Don’t make fun of patients. It is and will always be unprofessional. pic.twitter.com/Jp1iYwqljk

— Sarah Mojarad (@Sarah_Mojarad) December 29, 2019

Responses to the TikTok have been harsh, with folks fairly claiming that @MursiMedical's video hurts the public's trust of doctors.

My cousin died of sudden heart failure due to an undiagnosed heart condition when she was in her early 20s. This post is horrible. Assuming this is a real medical professional, part of me wants to alert her employer. She has a clear bias and patient confidentiality issues.

— Kate Kadash-Edmondson (@KadashKate) December 29, 2019

Patients come in worried and seek treatment. Even *if* the symptoms that match Dr Googles diagnosos are wildly off the mark, there is a human, calling us Dr, wanting help. That human - our patient- needs to be helped in some way or another.

— Samuel Tan (@samtanyx) December 29, 2019

i hate this trend of doctors/nurses assuming every patient is lying or exaggerating their pain. you think people would go to the doctor without health insurance/a high co-pay to fake a pain or illness?

— ♡ 𝐩𝐫𝐢𝐬𝐜𝐢𝐥𝐚 ♡ (@pwiscila) December 30, 2019

Even though she may have had innocent intentions when making the TikTok, its implications are real.

As of the time this story was published (December 31, 2019), @MursiMedical's TikTok account is no longer available. Its URL redirects to a 404 page error on TikTok's website.