TikTok creator Miki Rai responds to claims she faked nursing career during pandemic

TikTok creator Miki Rai has responded after being accused of faking a nursing career on her social media account.

Rai is under fire for allegedly lying about being a frontline healthcare worker during the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic.

Miki Rai, who has 1.7 million TikTok followers and 220,000 Instagram followers, claims to be a Washington State-based nurse. She has recently gained a large following, as she gives followers an inside look into what appears to be her life as a frontline nurse.

@fr0ntline

There’s NO excuse for pretending to be a frontline nurse. ##nurse ##frontline ##covid ##drama ##miki ##thankunext ##fyp ##fypシ

♬ thank u, next - Ariana Grande

Rai has created videos sharing insights into her job and life, viral trends and even workouts. The videos receive hundreds of thousands of views a day and high levels of engagement from her dedicated followers.

The influencer has been posting regularly on her account since August of 2019, when she shared mainly dance videos, but also posted numerous videos featuring herself in her signature scrubs.

At the beginning of August of this year, some fellow TikTok users began to question whether Rai was being completely honest with her followers about her job as a nurse.

@mikiraiofficial

##dayinthelife repost from a couple weeks ago👀...gearing up for this week!! ##nurse

♬ original sound - mikiraiofficial

User @fr0ntline created an account specifically to call out Rai for allegedly lying to her followers about being a frontline worker when she’s been working from home during the pandemic.

The first video from @fr0ntline account accuses Rai of “pretending to be a frontline worker just for TikTok/YT views” and “capitalizing on a pandemic.”

The bio for @fr0ntline includes a link back to a Reddit thread that includes details about claims that Rai hasn’t been completely honest with followers.

@mikiraiofficial

here you go! ##nurse ##registerednurse

♬ Duduke - Rinyu

Rai claimed to work at the Pediatric Intensive Care Unit at UCLA Health Hospital, but according to a Buzzfeed article from April of 2020, a rep for the hospital said “Rai has not been an employee there since October 2019.”

In January of 2020, Rai shared a video on her Youtube channel where she shared a “day in the life of a nurse working from home.”

On August 11, Rai finally acknowledged the call outs on social media, explaining she had been working in a hospital as well as working from home as a triage and primary care nurse.

The video also disclosed that in February she “took a temporary leave from the hospital since [she] was overworked” and that when coronavirus escalated her work from home job became busy as she was “coordinating coronavirus tests, making sure patients had their results, getting patients in with their Primary Care Practitioners, etc.”

View this post on Instagram

You have to take care of you before you take care of others. Your first year will be your hardest. Whether you’re a new grad #nurse, an #intern .. or not even in #healthcare, I think we can all agree that the first year is a hot emotional mess. You have no idea what you’re doing, but you want to be helpful. I can’t even begin to explain pre-shift anxiety and that feeling of your heart dropping days before your next shift not knowing what’s coming. If you have too many days off in a row, you fear you’ll forget everything, but at the same time, you feel like you need some time off so that you can rest and reset. People trust you and depend on you, and you don’t want to let anyone down, yet you feel like you are letting yourself down everyday. I’d be lying if I said it was easy 🤷🏻‍♀️. I cried often and questioned whether I made the right decisions. But those feelings are normal. Like in any job, you are learning, and you are growing. But unlike other jobs, lives are on the line. If you’re going through this—know that it’s an incredible amount of pressure, and you deserve to be told that you’re doing a great job. If you start to feel burnt out.. talk to someone, get help, take a break. Burnout isn’t something that only happens after a lifetime in a career. And if you’re on the other side, remember that a little kindness goes a long way 💗. P.s, fit is from @jaanuubydrneela.

A post shared by Miki Rai, BSN, RN (@mikirai) on Aug 13, 2020 at 4:47pm PDT

She then went on to share that her boyfriend, Kevin, got a job outside California so she also applied for work where his new job was in Washington State so they could make their relationship work.

Rai ended her video by explaining that she had addressed all of this on her YouTube channel and that she is “really sorry." She said: "It wasn’t my intention to deceive anyone that I was working from home for a few months. I was working directly for COVID efforts (coordinating tests, results and appointments) but not in person.”

The nurse turned influencer went on to share her nursing license in California and her current temporary nursing license in Washington State with her followers to prove that she is in fact a working nurse.