Resurrection of the creative doctor

IT WAS never going to stay dormant for long – just four months after the Creative Doctors Network announced its stage death, the artistic medico group is back under the new leadership of three GPs.

“We decided we missed it, and we decided it was a wonderful forum for doctors and medical students to get together and network about another side of their lives, the creative part,” Dr Jan Orman, a GP, creative writer and now one of the CDN’s new organisers told MO.

“We know there’s a lot of creativity out there among doctors, and it’s nice to have an opportunity to explore that with other people with shared interests.”

The new CDN has no formal affiliation with the AMA (NSW), which had previously supported it, and instead of holding its events on AMA premises plans to hold its thrice-yearly themed evenings in a different artistic venue.

But that isn’t the biggest change – the CDN will no longer be competitive and will aim to have the focus of its evenings a talk by a doctor who has succeeded in a creative field sharing details of their life outside medicine.

The first event of the new CDN, a visual arts evening, recently drew 40 people to a glassmaker’s studio.

A writing-themed event is planned for 9 August at NG Gallery, Chippendale. RSVP to Howard@aya.yale.edu