Four surgeons changed out of their scrubs, stashed away their surgical tools and plugged in their electric guitars when the workday ended at night.
Plastic surgeons Jason Roostaeian, Robert Kang and Phuong Nguyen and oral surgeon Solomon Poyourow are equally at home working beneath operating room lights and in front of stage lights. In 2011, they created the band Help the Doctor after discovering their shared interests and talents in rock music during their residencies at the Ronald Reagan UCLA Medical Center. Help the Doctor released its first album, “Angeles,” on iTunes and Spotify in December 2015.
Before attending a UCLA-USC football game together, Nguyen noticed an electric bass hanging from a wall in Roostaeian’s home. The two hit a chord: They realized they both had played in rock bands since adolescence.
They weren’t the only surgery residents harboring a hidden love of rock music. In the midst of mandible reconstructions and rhinoplasties, Roostaeian said the surgeons’ conversations often turned to music. Poyourow and Kang, he said, revealed their own love for alternative rock music and performance.
Banding together seemed the obvious next step, Roostaeian said. They then selected the title “Help the Doctor” based on an operating room inside joke: An experienced surgeon will say “help the doctor” when the assistants aren’t doing their jobs well. Roostaeian, for instance, said he would utter the phrase in jest to Poyourow, who was an intern at the time.
The band name, however, is the only reference the members make to their day jobs.
“We didn’t want to be labelled as this band of doctors that play subpar music,” Nguyen said. “Each of us pursues music with a significant amount of love, and all of us have individually been playing our instruments for a while.”
Keyboardist Kang said he had trained intensely and competed internationally as a classically trained pianist while concurrently studying biology at Brown University.
“I would lock myself in this little, dungeon-like, soundproof practice room rehearsing for piano competitions,” Kang said. “If you can do that, you can study in the library alone for hours for your medical exams.”
Likewise, drummer Poyourow said he spent six months after his undergraduate studies pursuing a stint as an indie rock musician in Oregon.
Eventually disenchanted with his music pursuits, Poyourow said he left behind his makeshift basement recording studio to move to New York to get his master’s degree in public health from Columbia University. Now, he said he relies on his gigs with Help the Doctor to relive the rockstar ambitions of his youth.
“I always had being a doctor in my mind as what I was eventually planning on doing,” Poyourow said. “But you always have a little dream, like maybe I can be a rockstar instead.”
In December 2011, Kang said the members got together three or four times a week to rehearse in the guest room of Roostaeian’s cousin, who lived near Ronald Reagan UCLA Medical Center. Kang said their nighttime practices ran from 8 p.m. to 11 p.m. following their 12-hour operating room shifts. Shows were reserved for Saturday nights, he said, since it was the only day they weren’t on call as surgeons.
Roostaiean, a Los Angeles native, said he connected with friends in local bands to land Help the Doctor its first gig three months later at the Troubadour in West Hollywood.
“We were given a half-hour slot, and there was a line out the door and our first show sold out,” Nguyen said. “People were actually scalping our tickets.”
Help the Doctor has since headlined at The Roxy, The Viper Room and The House of Blues in West Hollywood, building enough of a reputation to not rely solely on Roostaeian’s industry contacts for bookings. Kang said the band’s audiences are a mix of genuine rock fans, family and even patients.
“We were a little nervous about what our patients would think if they Googled us and it came up that their doctor was in a rock band,” Kang said. “But it turns out it’s always put a smile their faces and they think it’s really cool that we can have fun in our spare time.”
Nguyen said the band also reconciles its music and shared work as head and neck specialists by donating profits from its performances to charities hosting mission trips involving reconstructive surgery for children born with facial abnormalities.
Each of the surgeons had completed his residency at Ronald Reagan UCLA Medical Center by 2014. Roostaeian said that now that the four are split between medical practices in Westwood, Duarte and Los Alamitos in California and Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, the band performs live only sporadically.
Despite the challenges of reuniting, Roostaeian said the band isn’t ready to press pause yet. After all, he said music is the four surgeons’ lifeline.
“Music is a reset button, and it makes us more excited about our day jobs,” Roostaeian said. “It’s important to have passions outside of work and enjoy life for yourself.”