How the Glaucomfleckens are Humanizing Medicine, One Laugh at a Time

<p>The medical news publication STAT calls Will Flanary “the Internet’s funniest doctor.” The guests we bring on the show usually talk about how technology is changing healthcare, but Will and his wife Kristin are changing healthcare in a very different way—through comedy. A former standup comic who trained as an ophthalmologist and runs a successful ophthalmology practice in Oregon City, Oregon, Will is better known by his alter ego “Dr. Glaucomflecken.” His short videos have millions of views on YouTube and TikTok, and feature a cast of quirky characters, all played by Will himself, who lightly satirize medical culture and the idiosyncracies of the US healthcare system. And now Will and Kristin have a hybrid comedy and interview podcast called “Knock, Knock, Hi” where they bring on guests who share their own weird and hilarious medical stories.</p><p>If you wanted to find a comparably successful crossover between medicine and comedy, you’d probably have to go all the way back to TV shows like M*A*S*H and Scrubs. But as funny as Will and Kristin’s comedy work can be, it comes from a pretty serious place. Will’s been on the patient side of medical care. He survived two bouts of testicular cancer. And in May of 2020, after WIll went into cardiac arrest, Kristin saved his life by administering CPR until emergency medical technicians could arrive and rush him to the hospital, where surgeons implanted a defibrillator. It was a nightmare experience. But Flanary’s collision after the surgery with the health insurance bureaucracy may have been even worse. All of it became grist for his comedy sketches, and today the Glaucomfleckens videos and podcast range across topics like what goes on behind the scenes in emergency rooms, how oncologists deliver bad news, or why doctors in different specialties sometimes have a hard time communicating. The basic insight behind Will and Kristin’s work is that in a country where the healthcare system often feels so broken and so full of crazy personalities, sometimes you just have to l