NSW Doctors Orchestra

NSW Doctors Orchestra

After a brief break during the pandemic, the NSW Doctors Orchestra has resumed activity, with their Musicus Medicus concert scheduled to be held 25 September. In this special feature, the group’s founder and president, Dr Cathy Fraser shares Dr Louise Baird’s connection with medicine and music, as well as this year’s focus for fundraising.

DR LOUISE BAIRD’S LOVE of being in a hospital started as a young child when she would go with her father, Cardiac Surgeon Professor Douglas Baird, to Royal Prince Alfred Hospital on Sundays. While he visited his patients pre-operatively, she would sit in the nurses’ office. These treasured childhood memories were to shape her life. She knew that her parents had met at the old Camperdown Children’s Hospital, where her mother worked as a paediatric nurse. 

His future wife turned out to be his former Physiology Professor’s daughter. It was from Louise’s grandfather that he’d learned all his research skills during his BSc Med Honours year at Sydney University. Louise’s grandfather even features in the background of Douglas’s graduation photo, as if heralding future connections.  

Louise Baird’s love of music started at a similar age. She remembers that when she was five years old, she wanted to play the piano like her older sister. Luckily for Louise, a piano teacher lived behind them. From their backyard, she could hear students during their piano lessons, and longed to be playing the same pieces. She soon was. Louise’s musical aspirations grew when she heard a neighbour two doors down playing the violin. Louise picked up the violin at the age of eight and hasn’t stopped playing since. She has fond memories of playing in her school orchestra and in the Sydney Youth Orchestra. 

When Louise was a 1st year medical student at UNSW she heard of the Australian Doctors Orchestra playing in Sydney in 1997 in aid of the Glaucoma Foundation. She was thrilled to hear that the orchestra was not just for doctors, and that medical students were also welcome. She remembers being nervous coming into her first rehearsal, choosing to sit at the back of the section of second violinists, not knowing anybody. She needn’t have worried. The GP she shared her desk with became a lifelong friend. That was the welcome beginning of Louise balancing her life in both medicine and music. 

In 2004, I founded the NSW Doctors Orchestra. Louise heard about it the following year on returning from working overseas and has played in most of our concerts since. Over the years, Louise picked up trinkets of valued advice from her fellow musicians, not just about medicine and training, but also about motherhood, about life. She welcomes orchestra gatherings as an opportunity to touch base with her mentors. 

“It is so lovely to come together again,” she says. “Each year this is the time just for me.”

Louise cannot imagine life without the doctors’ orchestras. She values these opportunities which have helped her keep up her music despite a busy life with work and family commitments. 

“As soon as I know the repertoire for the next concert, I download the music onto my phone and listen to it driving to work and during my exercise walks. That way, even if I can’t fit practice in that day, I’m at least becoming more familiar with the music.” 

She feels the benefit of using a different part of her brain. 

“Music calms me down. It is my escape. I feel as if my brain has been on a holiday.”

Louise talks about her work in Geriatric Medicine at St George Hospital with similar passion. She welcomes the medical complexities in her field and enjoys working with families, often with challenging social situations. 

“Decisions are based on a patient, not on a disease. In aged care you can’t separate the patient from the family. I love the multidisciplinary aspects of geriatric medicine and how important communication is between our team, the patient and their family.”

“UNSW has made me a conjoint associate professor,” she tells me with admirable humility nearing embarrassment. She also loves teaching medical students and supervising junior doctors. Several musicians in Musicus Medicus are her students and trainees. The roles have changed. Now it is their turn to be mentored by a musical medic. 

I ask her what else brings balance into her life. She spends hours each week in parks with her two boys, six and eight, connecting with the community socially. These are the sort of social connections we’ve missed over the last few years during the pandemic. It has been too long between concerts. We’ve missed both the playing and the interaction. In busy schedules, it always helps to have something specific to work towards, to motivate us to practice our instruments. During the pandemic, many of our members confessed to regretfully neglecting their instruments. This is equivalent to an athlete stopping training. We can’t expect to keep up skills and techniques without practice. Not having a ‘marathon’ concert to train for stopped medical musicians in their tracks. 

We strongly believe that taking care of our creative health helps us in our work and contributes to our general wellbeing. The orchestra is looking forward to reconnecting in September. This year’s Musicus Medicus concert “Harp to Heart” has special significance for Louise, as the funds raised will be donated to the Baird Institute, established in 2003 in honour of her father Professor Douglas Baird. Based in Sydney, it is Australia’s only dedicated cardiothoracic surgical training and research institute, committed to directly improving the quality of life for patients after surgery and save lives that may otherwise have been lost. Louise talks lovingly of her father and his legacy. He was a pioneer in cardiothoracic surgery in Sydney, trained the current leaders and was a mentor to all who followed in the field. His untimely death from cholangiocarcinoma, just six weeks after his diagnosis, at the young age of 55, would have been a devastating loss to his family, friends, patients and colleagues. Louise was just 16 when she lost her father. She remembers him as a leader who picked up on people’s strengths and focused on them. Dr Louise Baird is certainly following her father’s legacy in her care of patients and mentoring of students. 

Contributed by Dr Cathy Fraser, Founder and President of NSW Doctors Orchestra

Mission Statement:

Musicus Medicus aims to improve the health and wellbeing of Australians by using the universal language of music to raise money for charities in medicine and the arts.