Doctor Mike

Mikhail Varshavski, known online as Doctor Mike, is a Russian-born American family medicine physician and one of the most widely followed medical communicators on YouTube. He completed an accelerated seven-year combined undergraduate and medical school programme at the New York Institute of Technology, graduating magna cum laude with a Doctor of Osteopathic Medicine from the New York College of Osteopathic Medicine in 2014. He completed his residency in family medicine at Atlantic Health System's Overlook Medical Center and has been a board-certified family medicine physician in active practice since 2017.

Doctor Mike's YouTube channel reaches over 14 million subscribers with a format that ranges from reacting to medical misinformation in social media content to explaining clinical concepts, reviewing medical dramas for accuracy, and addressing health myths. Crucially, he continues to practise medicine alongside his content creation work, which grounds his commentary in current clinical experience rather than retrospective expert opinion. He was the first physician to be named a UNICEF USA ambassador and has delivered a TEDx talk on the dangers of the "I Know It All" expert mentality.

His channel was launched in 2017 and expanded significantly through the COVID-19 pandemic, during which he became a prominent voice for vaccine safety and evidence-based public health measures. His "Doctor Fact-Checks" series, in which he evaluates health claims circulating on TikTok and other social platforms, has become one of the most effective formats on YouTube for real-time medical misinformation correction, combining clinical authority with accessibility and genuine engagement with the content he is reviewing.