S03E55 Fleeting Fame and Fortune: The Case of TikTok Plastic Surgeon Dr. Roxy

Dr. Katharine Roxanne Grawe – also known on social media as “Dr. Roxy”, an Ohio plastic surgeon who livestreamed patient operations on TikTok, recently had her state medical license revoked.

Let's unpack the case of social media sensation Dr. Roxy, who rocketed to fame and success posting OR dancing videos but now faces a shocking professional downfall. We explore the power of social media marketing in an era of public surgery as we dissect Dr. Grawe's journey, illuminating the perils and pitfalls of fame-seeking in the aesthetic plastic surgery and patient care.

For the weekly thankful we talk about leveraging technology to monitor and improve your health. I'll be opening up about my own journey with fitness trackers, sharing how a simple device has helped me look critically at my lifestyle. Discover how real-time health data can inspire healthier choices and personal improvement empowered by technology.

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00:00:05 Plastic Surgery and Social Media Lessons

00:14:05 Fitness Trackers and Personal Improvement

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S03E55 Fleeting Fame and Fortune: The Case of TikTok Plastic Surgeon Dr. Roxy

[00:00:00] Dr. Sam Rhee: A plastic surgeon, Dr. Katherine Roxanne Grawe, 44 years old, also known as Dr. Roxy, who is well known for live streaming operations on TikTok, had her medical license permanently revoked in Ohio a few days ago. Coverage on the news and social media has been heavy of the so-called TikTok plastic surgeon, and why not?

When you show clips of her TikToks, such as this one where she's dancing and poking away during liposuction procedures, it definitely draws eyeballs.

Here is Atozy, a YouTube commentator with 1.3 million subscribers commenting on Dr. Grawe on a video that got 775,000 views.

[00:00:42] ATOZY: uh, when picking a doctor, followers don't mean anything. I feel like a lot of people blindly trusted her and gave her a lot of credibility just because she had a lot of followers on TikTok. The only thing a large follower account shows is they're consistent with uploads and they know how to make content that people will watch.

Which are definitely not qualities I'd look for when it comes to picking a doctor. I wouldn't want Mr. Beast operating on me no matter how viral of a video that would be.

Who is next to be absolutely botched while I make some TikTok content!

[00:01:14] Dr. Sam Rhee: Very impressive, but that's not the reason why I chose to talk about the sensational news item of this week. Or at least not the main reason. Maybe it wouldn't be awful to get more views, but I definitely don't have the style of Atozy.

It does seem that almost every week there are breathless items about botched plastic surgery where patients are seriously injured or even die under horrific conditions, often in other countries or under extremely questionable circumstances.

However, this particular case drew my attention cuz it was in my hometown of Columbus, Ohio. I don't know Dr. Grawe personally, but I actually do know someone who was on the state medical board who ruled on this case. So I took a closer look at the situation. While I initially wrote this off as a situation where a horrible person had gone rogue, letting people die while dancing in the operating room, there are some surprising lessons I think potential patients could learn, not only about choosing a surgeon for your cosmetic procedure, but how plastic surgeons, including me, should also think about marketing themselves to patients as well.

And the lessons are not just never choose a dancing surgeon, although that might not be the worst advice in the world. Or for me, never dance in the OR, although that isn't such awful advice either. But let's dig a little bit.

The first thing is that I was a little hesitant to talk about the situation because it's not one of the more common news cases in which it happened in another country, or the person involved is a cosmetic surgeon and has no actual plastic surgery training.

This is a case against a board certified plastic surgeon, which is what Dr. Katherine Roxanne Grawe is. But I didn't hesitate because our specialty's like the mafia where we take an oath of silence or we are a band of brothers or some other nonsense.

My cause for hesitation is because medical liability litigation is everywhere in medicine. We as physicians cannot escape this reality. According to the AMA one in three physicians have had a medical liability lawsuit filed against us, and over 50% of physicians, 55 and older have been sued at least once.

Almost every plastic surgeon I know if they've been working long enough, have been sued at least once. And these are some of the most skilled and caring surgeons that I would trust with my body or life if need be. So talking about an actual plastic surgeon that is facing legal action, unfortunately is not news, particularly for elective cosmetic surgeries.

All of us, as patients know intuitively, there's always risk with every action, including surgery. And unanticipated or unfortunate outcomes can happen even under the best care. However, we also know that negligent care is never acceptable. And that is where our responsibilities and duty of care lie as plastic surgeons.

And while medical malpractice litigation is a critical part of regulating and upholding the standards of our profession, the perspective on both sides of the courtroom can get emotional, ugly and warped. So most physicians, or at least sane people in general, have no desire to delve into any quagmire where lawyers take over the situation.

So why would I even bother looking at this case? Well, in the past I have talked about social media and plastic surgery, both on this podcast Botox and Burpees with plastic surgeon and ethicist Dr. Christian Vercler, as well as on Three Plastic Surgeons and a Microphone with Dr. Sam Jejurikar and Salvatore Pacella.

And those episodes were really interesting dives into what constitutes appropriate marketing for plastic surgeons, what social media is actually good for in terms of educational content, and what kind of posts are purely for entertainment value.

Are the Dr. Miami's of the world good role models for us as plastic surgeons? Is live streaming operations okay? What about dancing in the OR? What about patient consents? There are many gray areas that I think will only increase as the line between medical entertainment and medical education continues to blur.

So how did Dr. Katherine Roxanne Grawe, otherwise known as Dr. Roxy, get to this point? According to her LinkedIn profile, Dr. Roxy graduated from SMU, Southern Methodist University in 2000 with a BA, and then got her medical degree at UTMB or University of Texas Medical Branch of Galveston in 2005.

She then completed a plastic surgery residency at Ohio State University College of Medicine in my hometown of Columbus, Ohio. She did pass her board exams and she was certified in plastic surgery. She opened up her own practice immediately after graduating, calling it Roxy Plastic Surgery and Med Spa in Powell, Ohio, which is about 10 minutes from where I grew up in Columbus.

She was also medical director of breast services at Mount Carmel Health System, which is where my father now retired, but who was an internist, used to work. I actually wonder if my father knew her, and I'm gonna have to ask him the next time I see him.

Dr. Grawe stated she started on social media right out of residency in 2010. She became extremely popular on social media going by Dr. Roxy on TikTok, amassing over 825,000 viewers and almost 15 million likes. Her practice became extremely popular, and she performed by her report up to five surgeries a day, totaling well over a thousand surgeries a year, which included butt lifts, breast augmentations, and mommy makeovers.

The first sign of trouble was a letter from the Ohio State Medical Board in October of 2018, where they told her she needed to maintain patient privacy while sharing photos or videos of her patient's medical procedures on social media.

She then got a second warning in 2021 from the State Medical Board again about patient privacy concerns, and this letter also mentioned that Dr. Roxy caused avoidable complications which required additional surgeries for some patients. She was instructed to undergo remedial courses on professionalism and ethics, which she claimed to have completed, but Dr. Roxy kept posting videos including patient interviews, photos, and live streams of procedures.

She also answered TikTok viewer questions live while surgery procedures were still ongoing.

Finally, in November of 2022, the State Medical Board suspended Dr. Grawe's license after three patients filed complaints with the State Medical Board. According to the medical board, in one case, the surgery was actually livestreamed. Dr. Roxy looked and spoke to a camera while she performed liposuction of the abdomen. A few days later, the same patient was hospitalized and found to have a perforated small bowel and soft tissue infection. The holes in the intestine were presumed to have been caused by liposuction cannulas, poking through the patient's muscle, straight into the abdominal cavity, which is obviously a pretty horrendous complication.

A couple days ago after a hearing where Dr. Grawe argued her case in front of the state medical board, the members of the board, including Dr. Jonathan Feibel, who is actually a high school classmate of mine and who is now a foot and ankle surgeon in Columbus, voted to permanently revoke her medical license. Here's a video of him handing down the decision.

[00:08:33] Dr. Sam Rhee: Dr. Grawe said in her defense, she made social media videos because she loved teaching and wanted to explain cosmetic surgery to people outside of the medical field.

Here she is responding to the board.

[00:08:52] Dr. Sam Rhee: Dr. Grawe now has two weeks to appeal the decision.

So what can we take away from this situation? First of all, social media is obviously an extremely powerful marketing tool for plastic surgeons. Simply by making entertaining videos, she amassed a tremendous following and a patient base, which trusted her.

I get patients every month asking about the latest TikTok trends. One month it's buccal fat reduction. Another month it's ear pinning. Another month it's TrapTox, which I talked about in an earlier episode. So let's face it, all aesthetic plastic surgeons, including me, would love to have that kind of media presence driving patients into our offices.

The Dr. Miami's of the world are financially doing extremely well, probably beyond any of our specialty's wildest dreams. And honestly, a rising tide lifts all boats. All of the social media that potential patients are consuming, both legitimizes cosmetic procedures and builds demand. Even for us who don't do much media work, we still benefit from all of this exposure.

We can't poo poo what Botched, Dr. 90210 and Nip Tuck initially started and what's grown today into the TikTok and Snapchat videos on our phones. And many of us plastic surgeons have also dabbled with social media entertainment. I've eaten pizza and donuts on a cheat day and posted it. Chugged 16 ounces of water, posted video clips and pictures of me working, not dancing in the OR.

And even all the podcasting I do is in part an attempt to establish a social media presence with potential patients. But as I discussed with my colleagues in my previous episodes, these are gray areas that we navigate as plastic surgeons. We each have our own lines to draw, which may be different from other lines that other surgeons draw.

Mine has always been no dancing in the OR or anything else that might distract me from focusing on patient care. I would never live stream a surgery because of the distraction it would pose for me. Although I do know of other surgeons who do so usually for live teaching conferences or seminars, which is fine for them, but I've never done it and I don't wanna start now.

But I know what the draw is for social media. Some of the most liked and watched posts that we have in our practice are the ones where I'm working in the OR with a quick cut, cool music overlay, TikTok production that my staff has been experimenting with. And there's always the temptations to do more and more of that because when you're scrolling on your phone, that's what draws your attention.

Not a static, boring talking head like I'm doing right now, actually. So I don't know exactly where this line is, but for me, the lesson here is that sacrificing myself on the altar of social media is definitely something I wish to avoid. I might actually be swinging too far the other way, but I'm okay with that.

However, I wonder for the young savvy plastic surgeons who are just starting their practice, what they may do. The success that they see on TikTok is seductive, and their perspective may be different and their gray areas may be different than my gray areas. And that's not wrong, but I do think we are trending more and more into sharing everything for both good and bad. I will continue to follow this with great interest.

The second lesson is that surgical skill and focus on patient care always counts. That's boring and old fashioned, especially in a trendy specialty, such as aesthetic surgery.

I know I sound like my older mentors who used to tell me never to post before and after pics online. These were the same surgeons who told me anyone could do liposuction and why would you wanna do something so trivial? The bottom line is that responsibility for your patients, striving to achieve the best results possible, appreciating the trust that they have in you with the goal of looking better and feeling better about themselves.

As hokey as that sounds, that becomes more meaningful for me as the years pass. Where it once was about how many cases I did, how many cool cases I did, and how much of a big shot surgeon I could be. Those considerations are meaningless when you think about the impact you can have on every patient we work with.

That means being the most skillful and knowledgeable and caring provider, whether it be aesthetic surgery or any other specialty is what matters. That will never change even if the medium of communicating with patients does.

What thoughts do you have about social media consumption in this day and age, not just about plastic surgery, but in your life? Does it influence your opinions and choices that you make in a positive or negative way? Let me know.

My weekly thankful is my Whoop, a wrist fitness tracker that I've used for the past couple of years. It's not anything special. If you have an Apple Watch or a Garmin or a Fitbit, it can do the same things more or less that I use my Whoop for.

The main thing I use it to track is my sleep. I've been wrestling with trying to get better sleep. I know my sleep hygiene needs a lot of work. I need to decompress better mentally before I go to bed. Stop looking at my phone and computers at a certain hour and fix other habits, which ding my sleep schedule.

Some of it I know I'll probably never fix, it's just part of my personality and job and mindset over many years, but some things I know I can definitely improve. I also share my Whoop data with a group of friends who keep me accountable by razzing me about how little sleep I get.

That actually helps me to keep working on my health. The Whoop gives me numbers and feedback, which helped me experiment and do better with my sleep. For example, one of the biggest reasons I stopped drinking even socially years ago was because the Whoop clearly showed me how much it impacted my sleep, as well as other health markers.

Just like anything else in your life that you want to improve, you have to know what it is before you can take steps to make it better. And that's how this fitness tracker has helped me. Let me know if you use a fitness tracker in your life to improve yourself.

Please DM me @BotoxAndBurpeesPodcast on Instagram, or leave a comment at YouTube.com/@BotoxAndBurpees. Thank you for listening.