From medicine to music

Carl Morris talks to former neurologist turned opera singer Emer McGilloway

Have you ever imagined doing something other than medicine? A lot of medical students and doctors have additional talents, from football to fine art. Emer McGilloway, ex-neurologist and now professional opera singer, is such a person. She describes herself as "one of life's dabblers."

I finally catch up with Emer nearly three months after my first phone call. She's a busy woman. In that time she has been shuttling between four or five countries singing with Opera North--and she has also fitted in a quick wedding (hers). One of her phone calls came from backstage during "The Marriage of Figaro" in which she was singing the part of Cherubino. "It's for you," said my partner, "someone with really loud classical music on."

Emer has just moved into a new house with her husband. Thanks to a bout of laryngitis she's having a rest from singing rehearsals. It says a lot about her generosity of spirit that she is still happy to talk to a medical student whom she has never met for nearly three quarters of an hour.

What I want to know is, how do you get from a registrar post in neurology to a career as a professional opera singer? Was she always a frustrated musician waiting for her chance to get out of medicine? Did she hate medicine so much she was willing to do anything to leave?

Her family was "musically aware"
The reality is much more interesting. It is almost the stuff of movies. Emer is now 34. She was born and raised in Derry in Northern Ireland. Both her parents are head teachers and teach arts subjects. There were no doctors or professional musicians in her family, but her family was "musically aware" and everyone played an instrument.

Her medical career, like the rest of her life it seems, has been nothing less than exceptional. She was top of her year at Queen's University Belfast, qualified in 1990, and passed her MRCP within three years.

Throughout her training, Emer maintained an interest in music. As well as the traditional physics, chemistry, and maths A levels, she had also taken an A level in music. "There it was tagging along even then," she laughs. At medical school she sang in choirs and played the violin in the university orchestra and the National Youth Orchestra. She also played the piano. As Emer put it, "music was my free time."

With a year as a registrar in Dublin under her belt, the next step was to be research. But the commitment would leave even less time for music. And Emer realised that giving up any serious musical involvement was unbearable. So she spent a week's holiday on a music course in St Andrews, after a competitive selection process. It was there that she was "spotted" by the operatic cognoscenti, who said that her voice needed to be heard.

As someone who had always loved medicine, Emer found herself in a dilemma. She remembers feeling almost disappointed after the course in St Andrews. Things would have been easier if they had told her to keep the day job.

In the end she applied to the Guildhall School of Music to study opera and let fate decide her course for her. Competition for places is intense. Successful candidates usually have at least a music degree, while Emer had only grade 8 in singing.

It was far from an easy decision though. Emer says that she still finds it painful to talk about leaving her medical career. In fact she continues to do locums, as much to keep her hand in as to fill the gaps in between tours. It seems a shame that medicine is not yet flexible enough to allow someone of her ability to combine the two careers.

There are many similarities
There are many similarities between the two jobs. Both require hard work and commitment as well as ability. On average, Emer rehearses for six hours a day and then there are the various languages to be learnt, the dramatic skills, the lines to memorise. Both careers can bring a great sense of fulfilment.

Perhaps the biggest difference is the level of job security, as any musician will tell you. In medicine you will always have a job if you are good. But in the world of performing arts there are never any guarantees.

There are also some certainties in medicine in terms of test results and definite clinical findings. As an opera singer you are on your own. There is no "right answer." You rely entirely on your own creative instincts. And when it goes wrong, it is you who is judged. To an extent as a doctor, it is the profession that is judged when things do not go as well as hoped.

The response of Emer's peers to her career change varied from complete stupefaction--why would anyone choose a life outside medicine?--through to nervous confessions about their own unrealised dreams. It was for many colleagues an unsettling experience. From others though, secure in their own choices, there were genuine congratulations.

I think Emer McGilloway is an inspiring role model. She proves that it is possible to get off the treadmill, if that is how you feel about a medical career. But in her love of medicine she also reaffirms how rewarding being a doctor can be. She has a fantasy of returning to medicine one day when she has fulfilled her musical ambitions.

When I ask what those ambitions are she pauses and reflects-- "to discover how good I can be." Which is not a bad ambition for any career.

Carl Morris, fourth year medical student, University of Newcastle
Email: c.j.morris@newcastle.ac.uk


studentBMJ 2001;09:305-356 September ISSN 0966-6494