Enhance Your Practice Podcast
Enhance Your Practice Podcast
Season 16: Episode 76: Social Media discussion with Dr.Jerry Chidester
Host: Host: Diana Yoon-Schwartz, MD
Guest: Jerry Chidester, MD
Dr. Jerry Chidester shares how social media transformed his plastic surgery practice, turning consistent, authentic content into a powerful marketing tool. From battling shadow banning to spending 20 hours a week creating posts, he breaks down the realities of building an online presence in medicine. His viral success—often driven by patient-shared content—proves that social media can level the playing field, offering surgeons a cost-effective way to connect, educate, and grow their practice.
you're listening to the enhance your practice podcast series brought to you by ASPS University. I'm Diane Schwartz, chair of practice management committee, and I invite you to check out all of our educational offerings, from professional surgical videos, courses on practice management and much more on ASPS EdNet. All right, so welcome to Season 16, social Media and Marketing. Today, we are joined by Dr Jerry Chidester, better known as Dr Chiddy.
Diana Yoon-Schwartz, MD:Dr Chidester is a board-certified plastic surgeon based in Draper, utah, just outside of Salt Lake City. He specializes in aesthetic surgery of the face, breast and body. He has a bachelor's in medical degree from the University of Utah. He then trained in plastic surgery in Southern California at Loma Linda University, followed by a hand and upper extremity surgery fellowship in Los Angeles. He serves on the social media committee for the American Society of Plastic Surgery and is a frequent faculty speaker at our annual meeting. He received the Plastic Surgery Society Award for Best Use of Social Media in 2023. He focuses on using social media to connect with his patients, educate the public and foster knowledge, trust and transparency in the specialty. So hi, jerry, welcome.
Jerry Chidester, MD:Hi, thank you so much. Thanks for having me.
Diana Yoon-Schwartz, MD:Thanks. So I did try to prepare for this podcast by reviewing your social media, but I must confess I would need probably like weeks and months to actually evaluate all of your content. So it's not as extensive as I had intended. But I think, as you had stated in our initial discussions, your social media presence is sort of like an online reality show, I think is how you described it. So I will first give you the opportunity to tell us a little bit about yourself that maybe I wasn't able to summarize in my intro, and then also kind of flow into that, tell us about how and why you started all of your online presence.
Jerry Chidester, MD:Awesome. Well, thank you. Yeah, so a little bit more about me. I mean, you mentioned my educational background, but going back a little bit further than that kind of what drew me even into medicine and why I even looked into plastic surgery in the first place.
Jerry Chidester, MD:I grew up overseas, in Saudi Arabia. My dad's actually from Utah, where we're at now, but he's a dentist and me him, my mom and our three sisters lived in Saudi Arabia for about six years and that was all my whole childhood. Growing up, I just lived on this hospital compound. My dad worked for the Royal family and so just from an early age I was surrounded by, you know, doctors and people in the healthcare profession. All my friends' dads were cardiothoracic surgeons, neurosurgeons, all that. And so I was just, it was ingrained in me that, you know, that was like what I should probably do, and so when we moved back to the United States in the early nineties, you know, into middle school and high school here in Utah, it was just something that I thought I always wanted to be, you know, and in high school, my wife and I we met in high school, so we're like kind of like high school sweethearts, I guess. But when she first asked me what I wanted to be when I grew up. I told her I wanted to be a cardiothoracic surgeon. It just sounded so cool, you know, at the time it sounded very glorious. But as I really got serious about it I realized, like no, I actually really do want to have a career in medicine and I think all the experiences I had growing up really led me to that. And so I stayed here at the University of Utah for eight years, did my undergrad here and then stayed here for medical school.
Jerry Chidester, MD:But it's honestly like halfway through medical school that I figured out I wanted to actually be a plastic surgeon. And as I was looking into cardiothoracic surgery, I just didn't feel like it was the specialty for me. I didn't love the lifestyle that some of the people I had, like my mentors, had, and it just it didn't and it seemed kind of boring. I want to be honest, I think my ADHD was just kicking in in med school and so I'm like I want to do a profession where I uh, I'm not going to get bored, you know.
Jerry Chidester, MD:And then I went to career day and I met one of the plastic surgeons up here at the university of Utah, Dr Corey Agarwal she's still there, her and Jay Agarwal at the university of Utah, and she was talking about plastic surgery. She said, you know, this is not a specialty, it's we're the surgeon surgeons. You know we're kind of the last general, true general surgeons. We're going to work with all different subspecialties in surgery, you know, with opportunity to operate head to toe, any age of patient, any gender. And I was like blown, like blown away.
Jerry Chidester, MD:And again my ADHD was like okay, this is going to be very appealing to me and I always have loved kind of the artistic side of you know things like the right brain side, and so that was obviously appealing and everything just came together and you know, I ended up again going to Loma Linda and here I am. So you had asked me a little bit about how I got into social media. I was actually in fellowship at USC. I was actually planning on being a full-on hand surgeon. I did an orthopedic upper extremity fellowship at USC looking at jobs in LA.
Jerry Chidester, MD:Yeah, and, and my mom you know. So I'm half Thai and my dad's Caucasian, so in Asian culture you know my mom's like I'm the only son you know, and she's like Right with three sisters you were saying so are you the youngest or the oldest?
Jerry Chidester, MD:I'm the oldest actually, yeah, I'm the oldest and the boy. And so she's like can you at least look in Utah for a job? I said okay, because we love California. You know we have three kids. And so I said that's fine. And so I came out here, actually interviewed with a couple practices. I knew some of the surgeons out here and I actually really liked one of the practices, I liked what they were doing, but it was an aesthetic practice and I thought, you know, I could come here and, do you know, trauma hand at the level one trauma center and build an aesthetic practice. That sounds fun. And so, yeah, we ended up back here in Utah, but during that time, you know, I was doing trying to like, do Instagram while I was in fellowship and it wasn't really like plastic surgery stuff, it was like foodie stuff. I love food. La has so much good food that I was building more of a foodie presence on.
Diana Yoon-Schwartz, MD:Wow, you're like totally speaking my language.
Jerry Chidester, MD:Oh, I mean, you're in New York so you guys got endless food, which is amazing. But yeah, so that's where I started and my wife she had done more you know kind of Instagram stories and those types of things, and so she was actually one teaching me how to do a story. I remember the first story I did on Instagram. I think I filmed it like 15 times. It was like a 10 second clip and I just could not stand looking at myself. I'm like, I'm terrible, like I don't know what I'm doing, you know. And so I think there's a starting point for everyone, and that was mine in fellowship. And then, when I joined the practice here in Utah, I was a facial plastic surgeon. His practice really did kind of push Instagram and social media, and so that's something I actually really learned from them. I was like, wow, this could actually be a really cool educational tool to help patients feel more comfortable with what we do on a day-to-day basis.
Diana Yoon-Schwartz, MD:And so that's kind of what so let me go back to sort of your practice. So they already had a social media account or presence, or you're saying that the individual surgeons within your group had their own, like what was their situation?
Jerry Chidester, MD:Yeah, so it was a solo facial plastic surgeon. He had his own personal or business doctor account and then the spa that he had there had its account, so they had two accounts and then, yeah, so I started my own kind of mirrored what they were doing, just to have the same type of you know vibe as the others, just to match.
Diana Yoon-Schwartz, MD:But yeah, that's how I started. So what would you say? Your like very first posts were about. You said it mirrored their practice. So was it just?
Jerry Chidester, MD:uh, yeah, very educational driven. So I was doing a lot of hand back then and so I was trying to mix hand with, you know, talking about, let's say, breast implants, but I would you know, yeah, yeah. Well, it'd be like yeah, neck, neck fash all night, come in and then come to a breast augmentation in the morning. You know it's kind of a bipolar practice, but um, but I was really educating just about hand surgery and, like I said, necrotizing fasciitis.
Jerry Chidester, MD:I educated about like hey, don't put your hand in a snowblower because we've seen it in Utah during the winters, Don't put your hand in your lawnmower, but just trying to educate and establish like, hey, I'm here in Utah but I'm also, I care about you and I want you to be safe, but I'm here if you need help. You know, just that was the vibe I was putting out in the beginning and and I think you know, and I think this is for anyone that's starting out, if they're trying to get into social media, it's like really trying to find your own voice, and that's what I was trying to for the first, probably year and a half before I went, started my own practice. I just was trying to figure out who I was. I'm in my boards collection. You want to be careful, you don't want to be, too weird or over the top.
Jerry Chidester, MD:So I was very conservative and I would say I'm still conservative, but I just am more of myself now. But it really took me that time to figure out okay, I can be myself if I like to dance, because I've grown up break dancing and loved it.
Diana Yoon-Schwartz, MD:Yeah, that was one thing that I always wondered if you must be at least a little bit rhythmic to enable you to have a social media account, because you do some very cool moves. I've still been trying to learn how to do the apartment song. I'm Korean. So I feel like I should be able to do the Rose apartment song, which I can't seem to get the steps correct. But it seems almost like a mini requirement to have a social media account.
Jerry Chidester, MD:I mean, I think not many surgeons are on their dancing. I'm probably one of the few. But yeah, I think, if you're going to try and dance, probably have some kind of rhythm. I mean, like I said, I grew up dancing, I love to break dancing In Saudi Arabia. Figure out how to try and dance, probably have some kind of rhythm. I mean, like I said, I grew up dancing, um, I love in saudi arabia. I mean, uh, actually it was when I came back here. I remember this is like in the early days of like aol. I remember going on and typing in like wasn't even google. Back then it was like I don't know, whatever it was navigator.
Jerry Chidester, MD:Yeah, and I'd be like how to how to do a windmill, you know, and there was no videos. It was like a text file of, okay, step one, lay on the ground, step two, put your hand, you know, and I was like reading, and then I'd watch old break dancing videos Me and my friends just taught ourselves, cause it was just not in the day and age of, you know, youtube, instagram, um, but that's where I started, I love. I was like eighth or ninth grade, I loved it.
Diana Yoon-Schwartz, MD:Yeah, no, I've seen some of those clips with you dancing. Now you said your wife also kind of either guided you. So what's her background? Because I do see her in some of your videos together and she has her own presence, but you do it as sort of merged posts sometimes.
Jerry Chidester, MD:Yeah, so she's honestly supported our family all through med school residency, even you know she's your rock, right yeah, so she worked when we were in utah.
Jerry Chidester, MD:She did all the accounting and kind of bookkeeping and help run their family business. They had a. Her parents had a pharmacy and a gift shop, so she did that all kind of growing up. And then she went to hair school. So she's a cosmetologist, hairstylist, so she did all that and that's something easy to do.
Jerry Chidester, MD:She did that kind of intentionally, knowing that if we went to med school someday, moved around the country, she could take that you know skill and profession anywhere, and that you know kind of saved us. I mean, she would be doing hair late at night on other residents residents, wives, you know because our schedules were crazy. Um, I really did that. And then, yeah, then we came back here. She helped me with my practice. So when I joined the practice where I was at here initially, um, she did all my own bookkeeping. You know she I'm like, hey, I'll be the surgeon, you can help me keep my books. Um, and then when we started our own practice in 2020 under Jerry Chittister MD, she's pretty much the practice manager and she's been that until recently when we hired a COO, but she's really had built up our spa and so she's just so integral into what we've done.
Diana Yoon-Schwartz, MD:Couldn't have done this without her, for sure, and it's been fun to watch her grow on the business side of things and just even her leadership skills, and it's just been fun yeah, it sounds like she was a willing participant and maybe not the case for every plastic surgeon to include their spouse. My husband neither likes being on any, even photos, and certainly cannot dance, so would not be a welcome addition Listeners might be interested in. Listeners might be interested in. So I mean, you know, let's talk a little bit about some of your initial, maybe viral, moments, cause I I feel like I got a sense of how you started to engage. But I know you, you must've had some specific viral posts. Maybe you can kind of describe it and then see how that might have influenced some of your future content creation.
Jerry Chidester, MD:Yeah, totally so. It's interesting because, you know, people are just so much turning to Instagram and TikTok for their research on plastic surgery nowadays, you know, and it's replaced for a lot of people. Google, like people aren't Googling. You know, before and after as plastic surgery, they're looking on TikTok and Instagram. So one of my earliest I mean this is during covid. Like I said, I opened my own practice in 2020 january, so two months before covid hit.
Jerry Chidester, MD:Covid hits, we all shut down and I'm like taking a call in the er and I have six employees. I have no funds coming in, so I'm just doing, you know, virtual consults, doing er stuff, and I'm doing tiktoks and content, trying to educate. And then one of the patients I had done a tummy tuck on, she posted her before and after and this thing went viral. I mean she had like I think like 8, 10 million, 12 million views, I have no idea, and everyone's like who's your surgeon, you know. And then I had posted stuff that went viral and that was probably one of the first times. I was like oh, wow, like people really, like people really really are into plastic surgery and it drew a lot of people.
Jerry Chidester, MD:I wouldn't say I got a ton of patients directly from that particular post, but it grew. It made me realize like, wow, you can educate, you can show befores and afters and people actually will follow you and like that. And so that was probably one of the earliest like viral moments I had. And then I've had a few ever since. I mean even more recently, like a few weeks ago. She's been all over People Magazine. But I have a patient who is on Dancing with the Stars and she just was very forward about her breast lift, breast augmentation after having kids, and I did her surgery. We did a TikTok together in the pre-op before surgery, because she's a dancer obviously.
Diana Yoon-Schwartz, MD:Oh fun.
Jerry Chidester, MD:Yeah, a professional dancer and we did this and that thing blew up too, you know, and that was more recent and so many people and I just love that someone like her, who's just so public, is willing to be like you know what, like it's okay, like I want this for me and I'm doing it because I breastfed my two kids and it's just had a very positive like reception, I think, just across the board, and so I love to see when patients do that, you know, and so to me, the viral moments that I've had are really not even mine, they're my patients and I just get to be on the sideline, which I love. You know, I don't want it to be about me. I want it to be about what we do as, as plastic surgeons.
Diana Yoon-Schwartz, MD:Yeah, and that just sounds so, um, both, um, you know, mutually uh, cooperative, I guess is the way to say it and, uh, very authentic, um, because the patient wanted to share their story, to inspire others, and then you were able to sort of, you know, help, uh, with some additional information. So I love that, as you know, one of your favorite and, you know, initial viral moments For those who may not, you know, be able to either have that sort of unique opportunity and let's say, they, you know, really want to just at least start to engage like they feel like it's important. Because, as I say to people, even if your mother sends you to a specific surgeon, nowadays you tend to just like look them up. I mean, even if you need to know their address, they kind of show up on Google and you know is linked to at least something. So if there's absolutely nothing there, I think people are actually more suspicious of that.
Diana Yoon-Schwartz, MD:I would say the absence of any content, then maybe something that's a little bit questionable. Even so, let's say, let's divide it into all the different groups, because I think there's about four major groups that I can think of and, you know, although you may not be able to provide info for all of them. I do want to just address each of those groups. So, for those of the audience who are in academic practice, I think they have some limitations in terms of their institution and what they allow. But let's say their rules are a little bit softer and they're able to have a private account as an academic plastic surgeon. What kind of? And you know they're not dancers and you know they don't have good spouses to put up what would you suggest as maybe a couple of ideas for the academic surgeon to start engaging them?
Jerry Chidester, MD:Yeah, I mean, I think you bring up first off the point of you know, in an academic institution there's just going to be so much bureaucracy and kind of obviously have to protect their name and their brand and as an academic surgeon, under that umbrella, there's obviously going to be limitations. And so I think you know there are definitely safe things to do. And, interestingly enough, I've been talking to surgeons all over the country as more and more I've been doing more social media, I've been networking with surgeons, whether they're academics, community, hospital based, private practice. But we've talked a lot about these things and what's kind of safe and what can be done.
Jerry Chidester, MD:And I think, for an academic setting, I think the most valuable thing is really showcasing the academic side of what you're doing. Right, You're pushing the envelope in plastic surgery and what are the cutting edge things? Or what's the research that you're participating in and what is it that you're passionate about? And I think it really comes down to your passion, you know, and again, like for me, if I could dance, because you know, no one can tell me I can't in my own practice, but in academics, yeah, you're not going to dance, but they're going to love it if you're like, hey, we do research on whatever. Maybe it's facial transplantation and this is what you guys have found in talking about your papers. But make it appealing, Make it to the lay public that they can understand how cool it is what you do, and I think that's very safe because that promotes the institution.
Jerry Chidester, MD:It's not doing anything that may put them in jeopardy and obviously you're always watching after HIPAA I think that's probably the best thing you can do.
Jerry Chidester, MD:And then, secondly, I still think you can show your personality, and it doesn't need to be again dancing or, but some people are amazing artists and sculptors and I don't know. People have pages that you know. It may not necessarily be like their academic account, if they let them have that or not, but if they have an Instagram with their doctor name on and they're like showing off the things that they like to do, and everyone's different. I think that some people don't want to show their family at all and some people are like hey, like to some level, I'll show. You know that I'm a human too. So I think those two things are probably the most important things you could do in academics that are still effective at building trust, you know.
Diana Yoon-Schwartz, MD:Mm-hmm. And then for those who are in sort of larger group practices, obviously, you know, the group itself usually has some sort of media presence and I've seen that a lot of them, you know, individualize themselves as well from the group and seem to have more, not so clinical but, as you said, more of a you know, here's who I am and here's my family and that's obviously, you know, to their taste as to what they want to share. But what other kinds of ideas would you say for those who are, you know, trying to be individual within this larger group, setting Any kind of pearls for them?
Jerry Chidester, MD:Yeah, totally. It's funny. I think next week, at the spring meeting for ASPS, I'm actually giving a talk on management of patient flow, the ebb and flow of patients in plastic surgery, and a big part of what I'm talking about is how to manage your social media and I kind of address the different groups that we're talking about here. So I specifically talk about these larger groups because, you're right, I mean there's some groups, especially I know that Long Island there's like massive groups of plastic surgeons. You know where if there's like 30 surgeons, like how are you going to stand out for one? Right, if I go on a website and I'm scrolling through you know A through Z last names surgeons, how do you stand out? And so, again, I think social media for all of them can be invaluable because, again, yeah, you're, you're linked to this brand, this large system, but there's going to be something like, obviously you were hired there for a reason and you were brought on.
Jerry Chidester, MD:You're contributing something to that practice and maybe it's your niche. Maybe you're doing, you know, weight loss, you know skin removal surgery. That's your, you're the person, you're the go-to, maybe you're the breast recon person or at least one of them, and so I think, really showcasing your niche and what you do, and maybe it's everything, but I think you talking about that and they probably have, and those private groups are going to have a little more potential leeway in what they can post befores and afters, and so obviously, patients really do want to see that. And this is something I've been working on for a couple of years now, trying to work with a meta and with other actually plastic surgeons. President Williams, last year, stephen Williams, we were trying to, you know, get a meta but really because we're we're getting shadow banned all over Instagram and so for us to try and showcase our work, but no one can see it.
Diana Yoon-Schwartz, MD:that's a huge problem, and so actually for those on this podcast who don't know what the meaning of shadow banning is.
Jerry Chidester, MD:If you could just give the layman's explanation before we start going into it too much, because I would like to address it, but there may be people who don't really understand what that means yeah, so I get a talk on this at Hot Topics for the last couple of years and this year I'm going to be doing an update and I do have some updated news on that later. But shadow banning essentially is if you have an instagram account and instagram deems your content as violating community guidelines, even though it may not be. It might be their bots that are automatically flagging certain things you're posting like befores and afters. Even if you've censored things, even if you've covered up, you know, sensitive areas, it will still flag your account and you can always check your account status. There's an easy way to do that. But if you get flagged, your content now is essentially suppressed, like it even will tell you. It'll say you are not going to be recommended on the discover page. No one's going to see your stuff if they search your name and they literally tell you these things, and so, um, that in essence is shadow banning, because, even though it's not outright banning you, your content is not being shown to the general public, and so that hurts you in two ways.
Jerry Chidester, MD:One, your content to your own followers is not even being seen. So if, let's say, you have 100 followers and typically 10 of your followers will see your if they're scrolling through. When you get quote-unquote shadow ban, that drops significantly and maybe even one percent of people see your content. So you know, be like having a billboard on the freeway but it's blocked by a big tree. You know, like, no one sees it. You're, you're there putting in time and money. No one sees it. So that's what shadow banning is, and you know it meant has come out and said many times like oh, oh, we don't do that. But if you look at it, we we did a survey um last year actually, and then we presented this at ASPS with Dr Sam Lynn at Harvard. Uh, um.
Jerry Chidester, MD:Beth Israel Um yep, so we we presented this as an abstract. We surveyed um over a hundred board certified plastic surgeons. Uh, about Instagram, and yeah, there's definitely a shadow banning happening, according to these surgeons, you know, based off their content.
Diana Yoon-Schwartz, MD:So so when that so, let's just say, your normal content isn't, you know, usually banned once this one event happens, is that in perpetuity, before you sort of make some sort of decrepit change, or how do you? How do you go about solving that, that problem?
Jerry Chidester, MD:Yeah, it depends on how many violations you have, but many times they'll stack it. They'll stack it at once. You know, all of a sudden you'll you'll wake up and you'll have a flag and they'll say you know your four, four of these posts were flagged for inappropriate content, sexual nudity or something which it's not, and you have to. You can appeal it always, and the appeals can take weeks. I had an appeal that sat there for seven months and finally cleared just barely, and that's only because I talked to someone at meta. So you know like it sits there. And once it's there, I mean you have this like you know black mark on your account and so even on like non-plastic surgery content. So that's why I kind of mix things up with posting with my wife, because I try to engage and we'll kind of do like a collaboration thing because she's not shadowbanned and so I try to drive engagement, you know, with people interacting on these posts that way. But even those are hurt, so everything essentially gets suppressed.
Diana Yoon-Schwartz, MD:And is it that they sort of occasionally change their algorithm so you can't almost pre-plan for avoiding shadowbanning?
Jerry Chidester, MD:Yeah, I mean, like you know, we know, like the guidelines, a lot of people and I've talked to a lot of plastic surgeons we understand what the printed guidelines say. The problem is the bots. You know, the AI bots pick up on things. It's like almost like it's too sensitive, right, it's picking up stuff that it shouldn't, but then it takes a manual human to undo or uncheck what was flagged by the bots and they just, I think they're just overloaded, like you know, they can't compete.
Jerry Chidester, MD:Now, I know mark zuckerberg came out last month, so right before the um, you know, presidential inauguration, everything, he came out and said, hey, um, we are, meta is going to actually do less of this bot. You know, censorship, we're going to back off a little bit. And so I have heard some people say that they might have noticed that recently. I haven't personally, but it will be interesting to see what Meta does. I think they're trying to go the route of what X or Twitter did and say, hey, we're not going to have these things, we're going to have actual people vet things out. So it might change, which would be good. And again, why does this matter? Cause it all comes down to, we're trying to create content to educate, and if you're trying to stand out in your large group practice, academics, private practice, in the end, if no one can see your content, it doesn't even matter, right? What's the point? Again, it's like a billboard behind a tree, like kind of a waste of your time.
Diana Yoon-Schwartz, MD:Can you give us like one, I guess, sort of impactful example? Obviously you know you must've taken some efforts to reverse it, but like, just just so the audience knows, like the kind of kind of categories for which you get shadow banned for.
Jerry Chidester, MD:Yeah. So the number one thing is you cannot show nipples, and if you're showing a breast, yeah guy.
Jerry Chidester, MD:So I just block guys and girls nipples, because it's like you know, if I can't show one, I'm not showing any. But as for that, that's like a very specific thing. And now it does say you can show them if, let's say, it's a reconstructed nipple from breast cancer, if it's a 3D tattooing of a nipple. But the problem is the bots don't know that. So you can do all that and you just got to be careful. So that's like a huge, that's the biggest one, right, and you can't show, obviously, like genitalia and stuff. But this is where it gets.
Jerry Chidester, MD:Gray is because you know we all cover them with, you know blur marks or flowers or whatever it is those areas. But because there's so much skin showing, let's say, on a mommy makeover, a tummy tuck, you know the bots are just flagging that and then they'll just come up and it says this is sexual nudity and it said and if you read the guidelines, it says you can't show anything that's like sexual in nature and like this is medical, this is not sexual, and maybe that's how their bots are interpreting it. But that's probably the main one. So the befores and afters of showing body stuff, that's, that's it now. If you look on tiktok, it's way more than Instagram, to be honest. So like I can't even show anything and even face procedures and things, now even on TikTok I've talked to some of my friends who do a lot of face.
Jerry Chidester, MD:Their stuff gets pulled down on on TikTok so they're very, very sensitive to the content that, as plastic surgeons, we put out there. But at the same time, you know, in my opinion I think in a lot of surgeons opinions, opinions is like there are people out there who are not qualified to talk about what they talk about and they promote things that are not scientifically based, that are not plastic surgeons, and that content just runs amok, and so the public is getting misinformation from people who are not qualified in this area.
Diana Yoon-Schwartz, MD:Yeah, I think that the pros and cons of all of this plastic surgery content and social media that would certainly be one of our cons is sort of the validity and, you know, I would almost call it like truth in the advertising of the information that's out there. So we have a, you know, big problem with that, especially in the advocacy world, which sometimes I get involved in as well. So now let's see here Would you say that your social media presence because you did sort of touch on this a little bit about extending your patient reach, so as far as like consults online or out of town or even international patients, do you think that it's helped you in any way with your online presence?
Jerry Chidester, MD:Definitely. You know I look at my practice currently and part of it, I think, is the geography here in Utah and the surrounding states, but about 30 to 35% of my patients in any given month come from out of state. Most of them are, yeah, in the 50 states, but I have patients from all over the country, and I know a lot of other surgeons, too, who utilize social media to extend their reach are similar in that way.
Diana Yoon-Schwartz, MD:And I think Utah.
Jerry Chidester, MD:It's an easy hub to get to because we're, you know, we are more West but we're not, you know, west Coast. We're a Delta hub, so a lot of people can fly in from all over the country, nonstop flights. Very easy to get up and down inside of Salt Lake, you know, on the freeways people like to come here to ski, so it's a very accessible place. A lot of people have family ties here. But, yeah, about 30% of my patients come from out of state and I do think a lot of that has come from social media and it's become more of where people are talking right. It gets to the point of where it's all referral-based, but now we're referring from all over the country. It's like, hey, I'm in New Mexico and now my sister-in-law's in Texas and she wants to come and they're willing to fly in.
Jerry Chidester, MD:And we've really tried to set up a system where it's very streamlined. All of our consultations that are virtual. I always see patients in person prior to surgery, I never just operate on them. So sometimes they get essentially two consults, but a lot of people just fly in for their consult. That's the point of where it's at. They'll fly in and then they'll go home and then we'll do their surgery when they come back. But yeah, we've really tried to streamline it so that all your follow-ups are the same whether you live in-state or not. Just a lot of them can be virtual and we try to provide everything helping them with getting places to stay here and just making it an experience for them, and so I think that's why it's done so well.
Diana Yoon-Schwartz, MD:Yeah, it kind of sounds like fun.
Diana Yoon-Schwartz, MD:You can ski in and get your consult stay for the week and then ski out and get your consult, like, stay for the week and then ski out, yeah you know, and then maybe for your actual surgery, the rest of your family can ski while you're getting your procedure and then recover on the mountain. It just sounds great actually. Yeah, Now would you say that as far as tailoring your practice, did you sort of anticipate that and have certain protocols in mind? Or it was like kind of an evolving process, like as your media presence grew, you kind of had to sort of tailor your practice and your business model based on that.
Jerry Chidester, MD:Oh yeah, definitely a lot of tailoring and figuring out what to do as you go. You know, like I said, I trained in plastic surgery. I don't have a business degree. I've never run businesses, so there's a whole aspect on the private side that's like, yeah, you're a technician and surgeon day in and day out and you run your clinic, but really you have to run a business too, and there is a business side to your customer care. I mean, they're your patients. But there's also this, like you know, experience that patients want to have too, and so I think that's definitely tailored as we've gone, we've really tried to elevate that experience and we're learning and but, yeah, there was obviously there's no rule book or like handbook or playbook of how to handle out of town patients.
Jerry Chidester, MD:You know, it's great to network because I think you can talk with other surgeons around the country and kind of see what works best for them and and take some of that information and utilize it. But yeah, it really is like, uh, figure it out as you go, but I guess it's been. I've been in practice now on our own practice since 2020, so five years, and I think we've got it to a good, good spot and it works well. You know, we have four surgeons, four plastic surgeons, four plastic surgeons in our group now, um, looking to expand again and we all just run those same protocols. Our nurses know them, our medical assistants, our PAs, you know MPs, and so it just makes it very streamlined.
Diana Yoon-Schwartz, MD:Now, um, since you're like personnel with your plastic surgery workforce has grown. Um, this may help to answer some of this question. But as you've gotten busier, the time you spend sort of engaging in the social media do you think it's been consistent, more or less Like you know, like how much time do you spend? If you can give us like a gauge of that, because it sounds like a lot of your content, or at least the ones that I've seen, is so authentic, so it has to be. It looks like it's created by you, but you know, if you could just kind of describe the time spent and your personal investment in that?
Jerry Chidester, MD:So you know, I've talked to other people before about this and I you know it's different for everyone any surgeon because some people are like I don't want to spend time doing that. I'd rather, you know, go skiing or I want to go, whatever it is you like to do. And what I tell people is is Instagram and social media really is upfront investment and you're not going to see an instant return on your investment and it may take months because you're you have to build a presence and build consistency. So for me, when I started out like as again I started during COVID, I'm like what else am I going to do?
Diana Yoon-Schwartz, MD:Yeah, no, it was perfect time yeah.
Jerry Chidester, MD:So it became like a, you know, almost a full-time job in itself. I answer all my own DMs. I don't have anybody, you know, answer those and I know a lot of surgeons say like don't DM me For me. That's how I built my practice and so people would message me and I don't give medical advice.
Diana Yoon-Schwartz, MD:That way but.
Jerry Chidester, MD:I, you know, I use it to set up a consultation and then we have a virtual consultation that way, um, and so I was doing that all by myself and I still continue to do that, you know. And my patients you know a lot of surgeons give their patients their cell phone. Well, nowadays, a lot of patients just want to message me on Instagram. So, um, that's kind of what they do if they have questions about their pre-op, post-op care. Um, but, yeah, I would say, even today, I've tried everything you know that I could think of, at least, um, I've worked with different companies, I've created batched content, I've had companies help me create viral content and, at the end of the day, I think what just I found that works best is, like you said, that authenticity part.
Jerry Chidester, MD:It's like, when I create it, even if it's me and my wife filming it, or I film it on my own, it's a quick educational clip and I post it. It's not a Hollywood quality level video when I do it, but it's authentic and I think people are drawn more to that. Or it's more spontaneous, like my patient's like hey, let's do a TikTok before my surgery. Okay, hurry, practice a dance. So I think those are the moments where, if you're prepared and you've done it in the past, when that opportunity comes, you can do it quickly and it's definitely more authentic. But I would say today I spend probably around 20 hours a week on social outside of my practice.
Diana Yoon-Schwartz, MD:Okay. So I mean definitely, it's definitely still a bit of an investment in terms of your time, but I'm sure many of us, when we do have some downtime, if we actually calculated the minutes at least you're being productive. Right, we may just be scrolling your content whereas you're actually creating and investing, so you're probably actually more productive to some terms. Now, in terms of, I guess, just guess just equipment. I mean, is there like a basic kit for somebody when they're starting to kind of create and film their content, like I mean, I don't even know like is?
Diana Yoon-Schwartz, MD:there or is a phone sufficient so?
Jerry Chidester, MD:I mean, I would say, yeah, most of the stuff I film is on a phone and I've hired, uh, you know, videographers to do kind of higher-end content, and that's different. But yeah, like, the authentic, authentic content you create typically is just on your iphone or android. And, you know, I do recommend getting some type of lighting, you know, maybe like a ring light, even something that's going to give you a little extra light so it's not so dark. And then, you know, they have all these little wireless mics like the one I'm even using, right, now the the road mics or the dji.
Jerry Chidester, MD:I mean, there's these little mics you can wear and that just gives a better audio quality than just coming off the phone. That's probably it. That's literally all you'd need, you know, is a light, a phone and maybe a mic, and that's a great start. I think now there are some like applications and software things you can download that are either free or you have to pay, like I don't know 20 bucks or something, but, um, you can help, it'll help you edit the content you can add in audio and. But even nowadays instagram, tiktok, it's all really built into the app so you can edit content in there and add audio, add text, and it's pretty straightforward.
Jerry Chidester, MD:You know, it's just. It's always that first time for people when they're doing it's like oh, it took me two hours to do it before and after. You know, I'm like for me, now I can, I can make one in like you know four minutes or something, um, and post a caption and all that. So it really is just like. It becomes habitual if you do it enough. And you know, I guess like working out, if you work out once every four months, it's just, it's a grind every time you do it. You know, but if you do, it.
Diana Yoon-Schwartz, MD:Yeah now, um, as far as uh, you know, I've heard of some people sort of having some stored content um just to, I guess, like keep up the engagement. So what happens to people if they like post and then they sort of disappear, is that uh sort of an unsuccessful strategy? If you could just comment on sort of timing, because I know there's like these huge, like sort of you know when I've gone to these talks about like when to let it out and you know if you could just give some guidelines about timing and and release yeah, a lot of that stuff changes over the time and you talk about algorithms on Instagram and TikTok and how they promote your content versus someone else's on.
Jerry Chidester, MD:You know someone else's pages or scrolling, so a lot of that stuff does have to do with, like, how, how much time are you in so specifically TikTok, like if you post once every day on TikTok or Instagram, the consistency of that, instagram says, okay, this person is committing time to do this. They do actually reward you, meaning it will show your content more. If you're posting inconsistently, let's say once every four weeks, it's probably more likely that you're not going to be seen by many people. Now, the opposite can be true, and this was last year and this might've changed Again. The algorithm changes, but some people say, look, don't have Instagram stories for a full 24 hours, right, if you're like, hey, it looks like my view is low and you can look at how many views you get on a story. But if you say, hey, it's been lower than normal, what you do is you let everything just clear out, give it 24 hours clear, and then you start posting a story again and the stories will pop up to the front of everyone's top, where it has people's faces as stories. It will actually pop up there because it's like hey, this person, we want you back, right.
Jerry Chidester, MD:So there's kind of two things happening there. It's like the stories. Sometimes it's good to just do a full-on reset. So, like for me, sometimes a sunday like saturday, I won't, I pretty much won't, won't post anymore on saturday, leave sunday completely blank, I'm resting with my family, and then mond Monday morning, start posting again. Boom, you get like way more engagement. So you know, there's kind of two strategies. I just I don't think I'd recommend, though you know, just posting once a month. If you're trying to build an account, you're just not going to build it.
Diana Yoon-Schwartz, MD:So all this like secret back information, is this trial and error? Is there like a manual? Do you like research? Like research, it like how do you get this information?
Jerry Chidester, MD:it seems to also be changing all the time, so yes, I mean exactly like google's algorithms and seo and all this stuff. Right, it's so, it is. It takes research and it takes um, um, kind of looking into it. So I follow certain people that literally their, their jobs on instagram are to decode and figure these things out. So I don't have to do the actual, you know, background work to find out and so that's. But I, I constantly check in with these people that post about it, you know, because that's what they do as jobs and they they do, they do like ab stuff, they do ab testing, they'll do trial testing, they'll.
Jerry Chidester, MD:They'll post tiktoks and see what happens and then they'll come back and report and then even, uh, moseri, adam moseri, the ceo of instagram. I mean he's, he posts all the time. He's like, hey, this is how you get more engagement, and so he'll like outright, tell you, and so, like, his page is great to follow. So if you're, you know, trying to grow and you want to know what helps, I would follow his page for sure. He's the ceo of instagram, um, and then there's actually something called it's like, I think it's like instagram creators channel. I think if you just follow instagram, they have like these channels now and they'll broadcast information like almost once a day and say, hey, try this to get more engagement. So they're like trying to tell you how to do it. Yeah, so that's something I would recommend people follow.
Diana Yoon-Schwartz, MD:So there's like a self-help platform, even within the different platforms. That's actually really great information, something I didn't know and very, very helpful. So you follow other people who help you, sort of you know, get all of your information out there. Would you say that there's sort of other than those platform experts, like other things, that you need to follow in order for other people to follow you? Does that make sense, sort of the latter of following or something I don't know?
Jerry Chidester, MD:Yeah, I mean, you know the whole thing about growth of your account on Instagram. I mean that's it really comes down to, uh, engagement, right. So you have to be able to, you have to be creating content that is appealing enough to whatever your audience is, that your demographic you're looking for, to want to follow you, to look into more, right, and so sometimes that could be a post that gets shared a lot because of whatever you said is like extremely, you know, and there was a post going around for a while of people saying like, hey, if you wear, if you have breast implants, you get in a sauna it's going to leach silicone, which we know is not true. But you know people were creating, you know, reels to kind of educate on that how it's not true. And then people, then people, are sharing that. So then when you see that pop up, people are sharing it in boxes, they're going to go and look at your page and say, oh, I like this person's information, they're going to follow you. So it has to be very organic.
Jerry Chidester, MD:There's just no way you can't buy followers. You know Instagram knows that all these fake accounts and so I highly recommend that. As surgeons, I think you know there's something about like looking at your follower count and people feel like they have FOMO if they don't have enough followers, or like, oh, maybe they're not a serious surgeon, which is really lame in my opinion, right, but like if you don't have a blue check mark, you've been a lot of followers and so I think it's very tempting for surgeons or in general just to want to buy followers, buy likes, buy comments. The problem is that actually really hides. Now that's like putting your billboard behind a concrete wall because instagram knows this and they will penalize you for that. So I highly recommend you don't do that.
Jerry Chidester, MD:But what I think you do do is make consistent, educational content that is well lit, good audio, it's not long and boring and drawn out and it showcases your personality and it gives a bit of information and that's what's going to draw people. And again, it's a grind. It's a. If you look how many posts I've done, I don't know. It says like 3,800 posts over the last five years, you know.
Diana Yoon-Schwartz, MD:I mean it's a lot. That's why it was a little difficult to go through all of them. Yeah, there's a lot.
Jerry Chidester, MD:But it's just like again, and you build it slowly and you look back and you say, oh, like I've curated this kind of content that people are drawn to, you know, and that's kind of what I'd recommend if you're-.
Diana Yoon-Schwartz, MD:Would you say these days, with the sort of you know fears and issues with TikTok, for those who are maybe just starting to engage, you should stick with Instagram or-.
Jerry Chidester, MD:Yeah, I mean TikTok. Yeah, TikTok's hard for plastic surgery, I think, because, like I said, they're really strict on any plastic surgery content. So I've really for me TikTok. I either just do educational stuff where I'm talking about plastic surgery or I'm doing other things, because I just feel like it's very limiting.
Jerry Chidester, MD:So I think if you're going to dedicate time anywhere, I would do it on Instagram, you know, and that because the nice thing about that is it actually will go over to two other platforms. You can automatically let it post to to real or, I'm sorry, to threads, which is like their version of twitter, right, and then it also can post over to a facebook account if you've linked it. So, really, you create one instagram story, one instagram post. You're on three different platforms when TikTok you're not. But your ability to potentially go viral on TikTok it's probably slightly more, but again, I wouldn't build an account and just pray that you go viral, because I think sometimes it attracts followers that you don't want to. And then now you have people following you where if you post something else, they may not like it, and now they're not engaging and no one watches it so.
Jerry Chidester, MD:I think viral content is like a double-edged sword, to be honest.
Diana Yoon-Schwartz, MD:And when you say about engagement, you're talking about when you like. Let's say, they post a comment and you have to sort of respond to it. Is that where you're referring to in terms of engagement with the audience?
Jerry Chidester, MD:Exactly so when you post something. So different forms of engagement on Instagram is one they like the post and there's actually like people have kind of calculated. There's almost like a point system where there's things that are more valuable in engagement than others. So a like is probably the lowest form of engagement, but it's great. Secondly, comments. So when people comment a decent comment, not just like one heart. So when people comment a decent comment, not just like one heart, but maybe they say hey, that was an amazing transformation or something Right, um, that's counts.
Jerry Chidester, MD:And then the third thing is if people bookmark it. So if you posted before and after, you know, let's, let's say, you did a breast cancer reconstructive case and people like, wow, like I have breast cancer and I love this, I'm going to show this to my surgeon, or whatever, they'll bookmark it, that surgeon or whatever they'll bookmark it, that actually holds a lot of weight in terms of engagement. And then if someone hits the little paper airplane share, that supposedly has the most weight. So Instagram really looks at how many views, how long were they looking at your page and then did they share it? And then the other stuff is kind of supplementary. But those are the main ways to engage and so those are all things. But the only thing you can engage back on is if one um, you comment back on their comment, right. Or two, if someone DMS you about a post, you reply to them in that DM. So those are only real ways you can engage back, you know, but that's kind of what engagement means.
Diana Yoon-Schwartz, MD:And and it sounds like your engagement back is certainly not as impactful as their sort of engagement and and and forward engagement of you.
Jerry Chidester, MD:Yeah, yeah, potentially. I mean, if you have a conversation about if someone's like well, hey, you know why? Why does it look like this? Or they're asking more questions and you continue to answer other people. So yeah it might actually bring other people to come and comment too, or now they're liking your comment and that's more engagement, and so you can. I mean, yeah, you can build off of that, I think.
Diana Yoon-Schwartz, MD:But yeah, whatever happens when sort of, let's say, either yourself or your patient puts themselves out there and they're sort of negative comments or sort of unfavorable engagement, how do you sort of put an end to that or how do you protect your patients, or any advice about that kind of situation?
Jerry Chidester, MD:Oh, totally. I mean, I kind of think of it this way. I mean, yes, one, it's my page, it's a public page. You know, I have consent from this patient, written consent, to post this before and after. But if someone comes on and says something negative one if it's ever about the patient, like either making fun of them or putting them down, I personally will delete that and block that, because if that patient sees some just rude comment, that is not necessary. You know, this is my page. It's like if someone's standing on my front yard and like doing something, I'm going to get out of my yard. You know this is my yard and so that's personally what I do. I don't know what other people do, but I just feel like I'm very protective of my patients and if someone says something like that, that's just so off the cuff. I don't think they have any right to be there.
Diana Yoon-Schwartz, MD:But yeah, there's always so you'll actually delete the entire post, or-.
Jerry Chidester, MD:Oh, noiving the post, maybe I may you know it was a shortcoming and I was like, oh, I shouldn't have posted that. That you know, maybe there's something I missed and people are like making fun of the page. I don't know, I haven't really had that happen. Oh my gosh, did you see this? And I don't like to engage in that.
Jerry Chidester, MD:Yeah, it just sounds awful yeah yeah, but that's the last thing you want. Is your patient seeing that and just feeling awful about the comments, you know, and so I'm very protective. Now, if it's something I did and it's like a dance and they're like, oh, this guy's whatever, and okay, fine, I'm going to leave it to me.
Diana Yoon-Schwartz, MD:They're still engaging with you, probably while they're making fun of you, so I guess that's still a type of engagement.
Jerry Chidester, MD:Yeah, exactly, and then there's going to be people that are just completely negative for whatever reason, I don't know. If they're having a bad day, they're projecting, I don't know. And in those situations I think that comes down to almost like if you had a negative review on Google. Right, it's like some people will look at your reply more than what that person said initially. So I think it's super important in that situation where if there's like a negative comment and it you know it's valid, then I think the way that you approach that, you know politically or you know how you go about it and if you're kind, if you're authentic and you know you don't put them down or whatever it is, I think that goes a long way and I all the people viewing it. They may not like what you said, like physically, but they're going to see it and I think that is again builds who you are and your online presence. Right, it's like one comment at a time, one post at a time.
Diana Yoon-Schwartz, MD:Now, when you um engage with your own private patients about possibly posting, what kind of conversation do you have with them? I mean, I'm sure you have release forms and maybe because they found you in that way, they have maybe a built in mission to try and share their information. But what's sort of your recruitment process when you do decide to share patient photos?
Jerry Chidester, MD:Yeah, I know, you know surgeons are just different across the board. I know some surgeons who make make patients sign NDAs and say hey, you can't say anything bad about me.
Jerry Chidester, MD:You're required to post this much and they may do like some collaborative surgical thing. I don't know, I personally don't do any of that. I think it's just doesn't come off as authentic to me and so I never first off. I think it's just doesn't come off as authentic to me and so I never first off. I never require any patient to ever post and yes, I've built my practice on social media, but it's been through organic and authentic means, you know.
Diana Yoon-Schwartz, MD:And so it's like I don't.
Jerry Chidester, MD:I don't discount surgeries to give them favor to post. I don't do anything different. Right, and if they want to say, and this is like again a double-edged sword, you know patients could go on there and be like, hey, like I, you know, I had a whatever fluid collection after surgery or oh, my drain was whatever, it is right, they're going to go on there and talk about it like it can be a double-edged sword, social media. But if they had a good experience, then they're going to talk about it. And you didn't ask them, you didn't make them do it. So I, you know, everyone has yes, it's an opt-out system where I say okay, here's the following I post on Instagram, facebook, tiktok or even website and I say if
Jerry Chidester, MD:you're okay with any of these initial here and then has all the details of what we would say and it says we're going to cover up all your personal markings, unless you say otherwise, to try and keep it as private as possible. But I never push it, I never force it, and actually my nurses a lot of times are the ones doing it anyway. So I don't even have any involvement. I don't ever want to feel like someone's pressured to have to post. Yes, a lot of people want to pay it forward because that's how they found me and they want to share their journey, and so I love that because it really does help educate. I think the best education a lot of times has come when patients are sharing their personal experience and then we're able to kind of, you know, assist with that on the on the educational side of plastic surgery to help that. So that's how I personally go about it and again, I know other surgeons are different. I just I feel like it's worked for me.
Diana Yoon-Schwartz, MD:So I've continued to do it that way. So for the you know modern day plastic surgeon, do you think that, without any kind of account or media, that they can I guess, yeah, even exist in the future, like, let's say, those who are coming out, you know, next year they're going to be, you know, board certified and start their own practice? Do you think it's like almost impossible not to have an account?
Jerry Chidester, MD:I think you have to look at it this way, like look at history of plastic surgeons, right, and how have we grown practices? Even when I went into private practice initially, like I said, I was doing a lot of call in the ER and I remember in training, traditionally surgery is like okay, you got to grind, you got to go down to the ER, buy pizza for everyone and get to know the people in the.
Jerry Chidester, MD:ER and then eventually they'll be like oh hey, my mom wants, and you slowly grow this referral pattern through the ER, or you're talking to different, different primary care doctors and you're taking care of you know. So like, yes, that was probably the traditional way of doing it and I still think that can be effective to some level.
Jerry Chidester, MD:But then too, I'm look at like websites, for example. You know, I think when the first plastic surgeons were doing websites like they were just getting grilled for doing that it's like why are you doing this? You know, it just felt almost unfair. Why is everybody doing this? It feels like you're getting and so like websites were a thing for a while. And then now everybody has a website. And then you know even the yellow pages, right. I've talked to surgeons who said you know, putting their name in the yellow pages. You know, some surgeons got mad at them in their community. So it's like anytime there's kind of a new way of essentially engaging with the public and you know being out there, I think it's.
Jerry Chidester, MD:It always ruffles some feathers, right so. But now, if you look at it like no one's using yellow pages, most people don't google a lot. I mean, some people still use, you know, the internet and website to do things, but really it's come down to social media. So if you're in a brand new practice, you're trying to establish yourself, you don't, you can't afford a billboard and I'm speaking from personal experience. You know you can't afford to go on a commercial on the radio or on tv, right all these things. But you have time, you have a phone and you have, you know, an account and you can post, and it essentially puts you on a level playing field. Now, yeah, you might have a brand new account and you're not going to have as much exposure, but you essentially have the equal amount of time to speak and up on the stand as everybody else, and so you can curate that how you want. And so, honestly, I don't really envision surgeons in the next five to 10 years not having social media.
Jerry Chidester, MD:And maybe this whole thing changes right, I don't know, but right now, and I think for the next at least five years, I think it's super important if you're trying to build a practice and secondly, to that, what I, you know, I think, a lot of mentality of us as surgeons. You know we tend to, especially in private practice, we just want to do our own thing. You know, we kind of we trust ourselves, we trust our staff and it's these big groups I'm very impressed because, like to have that many surgeons, you know, that many egos, that many minds get along. It's hard, right, but, um, I really think that you know, as we we look to the future, we have to say like, hey, the amount of people actually that know about plastic surgery in this country or that are even open to it right now is such a small percentage of the potential number of people, right?
Jerry Chidester, MD:Our market penetrance into the aesthetics area in the US is so low right now, like single digits. So you have to think there's not just a piece of pie, there's not just one little pie for everyone to, like, you know, take from, there is a lot of pie, there's a lot of cake, there's a lot of brownies, there's cookies, there's just, you know, and I think we have to kind of step back a little and say, hey, you know what? No-transcript.
Diana Yoon-Schwartz, MD:Yeah, it almost makes it into a fair and equal playing field, the way you described it, because you know it's not necessarily dependent on you know how much advertising dollars you have. It's a commitment, as you said, of your efforts, your time, your interest and sharing your authenticity. I mean it's a real opportunity actually the way you've described it. It's very inspirational actually for those of us who maybe are a little afraid to try or put yourself out there. So I think that message is actually extremely motivating to some degree. I never thought of it that way.
Jerry Chidester, MD:Yeah, I hope it is.
Diana Yoon-Schwartz, MD:Yeah, no, it was great. So I mean I really appreciate your time. So I mean I really appreciate your time. I just want to give you an opportunity to sort of share you know just some like you know extra you know last bits of thoughts about this whole subject, because talk to people about our specialty. It's a way to share how great it is. So if you could add a few more words of either advice or inspiration, that would be great.
Jerry Chidester, MD:Yeah, of course. So, yeah, my thought is, as we look at social media and what we are able to potentially do on these platforms, is really, it comes down to education, and if we're not the ones doing it, at the end of the day, someone else is going to step in and do it, and and that person is probably not going to be a board certified plastic surgeon, they're going to be in some other specialty. But I think it's super important for us, as surgeons, to really hold onto all these bits of plastic surgery that we're like, that we're experts at, and so I think social media is a great way to do that it. I know it takes time for people to create content and do that, but I really do think their returns are there, whether that's, you know, a financial return, whether that's a return on, you know, your reputation, whether it's on your, you know, whatever it is, your network. I do think it's just an invaluable tool for you and, again, for new surgeons starting out or surgeons who are transitioning, maybe from, let's say, academics to private practice, or from community hospital-based surgery to private practice. I mean, it's really an opportunity, like you said earlier, to level the playing field for everyone and I think at the end of the day, you know, all of us as surgeons, we want, we want the best for our patients and I think through social media we can raise the bar of of what we're doing for our patients.
Jerry Chidester, MD:And you know, social media has made the world really come together. You know, and I look at even like some of the trends in plastic surgery and aesthetics. I mean it's really a blend of, you know, stuff from South America, central America, united States, mexico. You know it's like the whole world, europe, like we all just feel like we're all right here, you know, and everyone's seeing the same things. So this kind of idea of this like global aesthetic, it's like I think it's really forming because of social media. I think it's really taking an effect and so I think it's exciting and I think it makes it an opportunity for all of us to realize like the potential for our practice, like you can grow so much and I'm like personal proof of that. You know within five years what we've been able to grow to.
Jerry Chidester, MD:I really think it's been through social media. But I think you have to do it in a ethical way, you know, an educational way, and always take the high road. In what you do, you know, never putting people down, but always building each other up. And I think if we're all doing that, I mean our specialty I'm biased it's the best one by far out there of all specialties. But I think plastic surgery is very, very unique in that we are intertwined into so many aspects of people's lives. We're not just doing aesthetic surgery or reconstructive surgery. We're really affecting people's overall health, their mental well-being, their social well-being, how they interact with society. I think all of these components really do come together in plastic surgery and that's what I think is just so cool about our specialty.
Diana Yoon-Schwartz, MD:Oh, my God, this was an amazing and very inspirational conversation. I want to thank you for your time, but also congratulate you on successfully integrating all of this, both the plastic surgery, the social media expertise and your love of both the specialty and all the patients that you treat. So thank you and again, congratulations.
Jerry Chidester, MD:Thank you so much, Diana. Thank you so much for having me too.
Diana Yoon-Schwartz, MD:We hope you enjoyed this episode of the Enhance your Practice podcast series brought to you by ASPS University. You can listen to our other episodes on other podcast platforms or you can download recordings directly from ASPS EdNet. New episodes coming soon.