Dr Bayo Curry says doctors’ online mocking of POTS can deter care
"Recently, recently I did a video where, or because someone reached out to me and they said, Dr. Bayo, can you respond to this Reddit thread? Because there's a group of doctors who are complaining about how people are saying they have POTS or Ehlers-Danlos because they just want to be trendy. And it was disheartening for that person to see it who has POTS because now they're like, oh my God, if I go to the doctor, could this doctor be the person on the Reddit group?"
About this episode
Doctor Mike Varshavski speaks with family medicine physician Dr Bayo Curry about medical gaslighting, patient advocacy and the ways bias and time pressure can shape clinical decision-making. Curry gives a first-person account of a postpartum emergency after a Caesarean section, saying a nurse repeatedly dismissed her concerns because her vital signs appeared normal; she says she was later found to have retained products and internal bleeding requiring transfusion. Curry links the experience to US maternal health disparities, including higher mortality for black women, and describes a follow-up conversation in which the nurse allegedly told her she did not “look” like someone in pain.
The pair discuss how clinicians’ assumptions can affect care, with Curry describing how she asks trainees to name their assumptions before entering a room and to test them against evidence. Curry cites historical and structural factors, including race-based adjustments in obstetric decision tools and slow uptake of new evidence into routine practice. She also recounts a reported case of a woman being turned away while in labour and then delivering in a vehicle soon afterwards.
Curry describes building a free directory of recommended clinicians (clinicianswhocare.com), which she says now contains thousands of names worldwide and has been rebuilt into a searchable form with additional verification. The episode also touches on clinician commentary online, the impact of public health politics on trust in medicine, and concerns that AI tools may widen “information inequality” when better answers sit behind paywalls.
Key takeaways
- Dr Bayo Curry recounts being dismissed by a nurse during a postpartum emergency and later requiring urgent intervention for internal bleeding.
- Curry says the nurse later told her she did not look like someone in pain, and could not explain what pain should look like.
- Curry describes teaching trainees to surface their assumptions and biases before assessing patients, using a suspected drug-seeking scenario that turned out to be appendicitis.
- She cites race-based elements in VBAC scoring and claims evidence can take years to become standard practice.
- Curry recounts the reported story of Mercedes Wells being turned away while in labour and delivering in a truck minutes later.
- Curry says she created clinicianswhocare.com, a positive-only directory of recommended clinicians, and recently rebuilt it with search and bot-detection features.
- Varshavski and Curry warn that AI-driven health information can perpetuate bias and deepen inequality when higher-quality answers are paywalled.