Kauai ‘Doctor Bikini’ goes viral on Instagram fighting sexism in medical field

Click here for updates on this story

    Kauai, HI (KITV) — Dr. Candice Myhre moved to Kauai from Los Angeles a few years ago to live the dream.

“I wanted to actually be like the old fashioned doctors and take care of my patient at the hospital and then see them at Costco or call them on the phone, or run into them when I’m surfing,” Myhre says.

When she’s not working as an Emergency Medicine Physician at the Wilcox E.R., you can find Dr. Myhre out on the water. She says sometimes, it’s been off the clock that some of her toughest cases happen.

“I was in the middle of the ocean surfing and a person snorkeling got hit by a boat,” she says. Myhre says she’s been in the right place at the right place on several occasions, stepping in to use her training to save lives, sometimes while still in her swimsuit.

It’s why Myhre says, like many in the medical field, she was outraged when she read a recent article in a vascular surgery medical journal that’s since been retracted. It looked into doctors’ social media habits and questioned surgeons would be taken seriously by their patients based on what they posted on social media or chose to wear in their off time.

The outcry sparked the hashtag #MedBikini, with many women in the medical field posting their own pictures and captions to drive the point home.

“You should be able to wear whatever clothing makes you comfortable and happy whether it’s a bikini or a full suit, it shouldn’t matter,” Myhre says.

She only had a few hundred Instagram followers at the time and rarely used her account, but decided to join in and share her own post to share her experience of sexism in the medical field.

“I just sent the post off and went to work,” she says. “Then I was in the E.R., and I heard that little noise when you get an IG notification and it I had to turn off my phone because it kept buzzing.”

By the time she checked her phone again, the post suddenly had more than 250,000 likes and counting, and her small following suddenly grew to over 30,000 overnight.

Myhre says her being both a surfer and doctor really combined to resonate to bring the message home. “The double standard just needs to end,” she says.

She’s getting messages from support from women in medicine around the world, but she says she’s also grateful for the support from back home in Kaua’i. Her male colleagues at Wilcox all posted their own Speedo pictures to show solidarity with Myrhe, who is their only female E.R. doctor in the office.

She says she’s taking her newfound social media fame as ‘Dr. Bikini’ in stride, and hopes to use her now large platform for good. “I feel like I’m the person who was pushed up on the stage and given the microphone and I’m trying to give it back, but they just keep handing it back to me” she says. “So I’m just going to take the mic at this point and go for it.”

You can find Dr. Myhre on Instagram @DrCandySurfvival.

Please note: This content carries a strict local market embargo. If you share the same market as the contributor of this article, you may not use it on any platform.