Nurse practitioner podcaster finds connection
‘You do you, boo’: ‘Claire O’bryan, a one-time cancer care provider, is building audience for her Dabble Co. podcast by speaking like she’s talking to her millenial girlfriends
She starts the episode about pesticides-heavy food — “Is the Dirty Dozen really Dirty?” — with a warning of sorts.
“I have a sick child who is one foot away from me at all times right now,” podcaster Claire O’bryan tells her guest, registered dietitian/author Lauren Manaker.
“So if you hear a random hacking cough, or like, a loud fart, that’s just my roommate next to me. It is what it is.”
In her Dabble Co. podcast, O’bryan takes on a mix of tough medical topics — COVID vaccines, oncology, fertility — and everyday issues like meditation, sleep problems and, well, butt acne.
The 38-year-old Nashville nurse practitioner is reaching growing numbers of young women with relatable, straight forward talk, often peppered with millennial or Gen Z expressions.
“Dude, they were drinking eight — I cannot make this up, I will never forget it, it is seared in my brain permanently — eight two-liters of regular Pepsi a day,” O’bryan said of an overweight patient with sleep apnea.
“Y’all, that’s four gallons. I can’t drink that much water in a day if my life depended on it.”
O’bryan concentrates on women’s health issues, booking (mostly female) fellow medical experts and answering listeners’ questions.
Some national media are taking notice. Southern Living, US Weekly and Popsugar website all have name-checked Dabble Co. recently.
Add The Tennessean and the USA Today Network to the list. We caught up with O’bryan in the Franklin home she and her physician husband have been renting since moving here from South Carolina a year ago.
The supermodel/covid nurse guest
O’bryan’s two most popular episodes so far are those with celebrity guests, Sports Illustrated cover model/nurse Maggie Rawlins and Bravo show “Southern Charm” cast member Naomie Olindo.
Rawlins made news last year when she returned to nursing to help a hospital COVID unit in Queens, N.Y. Rawlins told O’bryan about caring for as many as 40 patients at the same time, about six to eight times the normal patient load for nurses.
Olindo talked with O’bryan about losing her father to cancer last year. “Naomie even cried in the episode, and that’s not usual for her,” O’bryan said.
Both episodes drew about 20,000 listeners, two to four times more than other episodes.
Fighting misinformation
O’bryan, a longtime oncology nurse practitioner who now runs a medical aesthetics practice, started posting on Instagram first in 2019. She did so after getting angry about medical misinformation online.
“I saw folks with no appropriate medical training, no medical background, posting. You’ve got these people who are taking an online hormone program and making an Instagram account — I’m a hormone expert, we’re going to balance your hormones. No.”
So O’bryan wanted to put accurate info in the same spot. “I wanted to create a place where people could come and know resources here can be vetted.”
Simple language with no acronyms
“There’s a lot of mistrust in the medical community right now. Especially around COVID vaccines. All of a sudden there’s 5 million Monday morning COVID quarterbacks,” she said.
“I wanted to speak to people and interview people in the way I always felt was the best way to communicate with patients — candidly, on their level, using appropriate medical terms, but explain them in a way they can understand.
“So many people leave a doctor’s appointment not knowing what happened.
“I feel like the podcast brings a level of personalization. I’m having the conversation with them or for them.”
Funniest (and meanest) feedback
One reviewer on Apple gave Dabble Co. one star, writing: “What an idiot! Did she hear herself?”
“I literally was dying! I was laughing so hard,” O’bryan said, laughing.
“I just thought that was the funniest thing I’d ever read. No explanation, either. Hysterical. Why would they take the time?”
Reach Brad Schmitt at brad@tennessean.com or 615-259-8384 or on Twitter @bradschmitt.