Top Gun and Punk Rock in the ER

The most recent co-med-ical ‘Souffle of Awesome’ from ZDoggMD and Dr. Harry is Witch Doctor?. It’s a bombastic parody of the stereotypes of different medical specialties backed up with brilliant, and sometimes dubious, beat-boxery. They mock the adrenaline-fueled ER, sorry ED, doc who expounds about his extreme extracurricular adventures while saving a patient’s life. They even go as far as accusing ER docs of using call signs like “Maverick” and, er, “Soft Serve”…

Well, the thing about stereotypes, is that, sometimes, there is a kernel of truth somewhere in there. Let me introduce you to Exhibit A for the defence, Doctor…

Deniz Tek is an American-born guitarist, singer and songwriter who achieved greatest noteriety with the band Radio Birdman in the 1970s. He is considered by some as among the best rock guitarists in the world and, to quote Wikipedia, is “most known for exerting his burning Detroit style guitar influence over the punk rock genre in Australia”.

In the early 70s, Deniz studied medicine in New South Wales. He went on to practice emergency medicine and flight medicine. Although he traveled back to the States for a time, he still works as an emergency physician in Australia today.

But that wouldn’t be enough for him to have an entire LITFL blogpost dedicated to him. There’s more…

While Tek was Stateside he joined the US Marine Corps. He became a flight surgeon and flew backseat in F4 Phantoms. Rumour has it when a bunch of Hollywood screenwriters visited his squadron while doing research for a movie called ‘Top Gun’, they liked what they saw:

Which is lucky, because without the Iceman, the ‘Top Gun’ storyline wouldn’t have made much sense…

Reference