A few pages later, he spotted an article about a comedy workshop being held at the Holy City Zoo, which was a famous comedy club in San Francisco at the time. He attended the workshop "and that was it. I was hooked," he said. The workshop director "had us all go on stage to get comfortable with the microphone, and he gave a comedy-writing workshop on the weekends as well."
Before long, he was a regular on the San Francisco comedy club circuit and at other events, serving as an opening act for the likes of the late Pat Paulsen and Tom Kenny, who went on to become the voice of SpongeBob SquarePants. "I would do my residency, come off call, and do sets in comedy clubs," he said. "The challenge was to get an audience to laugh late at night when they were tired."
One night while hosting a showcase event at the Holy City Zoo, Dr. Silverstein introduced Robin Williams, who made a special last-minute appearance. When a fellow comedian told Williams that Dr. Silverstein was a "baby doctor," Williams quipped: "A pediatrician? I guess he plays miniature golf on Wednesdays."
Word about Dr. Silverstein's knack for stand-up comedy began to spread to the medical meetings and convention circuit, and he was booked so frequently that his initial break from residency lasted 4 years. "I was paid more for a single gig than I was for 2 weeks of residency," he said. When he returned to complete his residency, "speaking gigs became my moonlighting."
He finished his residency in 1992 and continued to give medical humor talks after moving to Stamford, Conn., in 1995. However, a few years ago, he cut back on his medical humor talks. "It's a lot of travel and I have small kids," explained Dr. Silverstein, who practices pediatric emergency medicine at Our Lady of Mercy Medical Center in New York. "It became more difficult to do."
He parlayed his sense of humor into a series of books that he has written and edited, including "Laughing Your Way to Passing the Pediatric Boards" and "Surfing Your Way to Pediatric Recertification," which are available at
He said he can't imagine life without humor as an outlet. "I would be very depressed and dissatisfied," he said. "The diversity keeps me alive."
The 'Healthy Humorist'
Dr. Brad Nieder is so captivated by comedy that he left formal medical practice 5 years ago to pursue it full time. He now practices what he calls "preventive medicine" as the "healthy humorist," giving keynote addresses at medical and health care conferences around the country (
"What I'm doing now is a form of medicine," said the Denver, Colo.-based generalist, who averages about one performance per week. "It's not so much that I gave it up, it's that I found an unusual niche."
Dr. Nieder was a founding member of an improvisational comedy troupe during his undergraduate years at Stanford (Calif.) University, but he didn't do solo stand-up comedy until he started medical school at the University of Colorado, Denver. He became a regular on the open mike-night circuit there.
"I became friendly enough with the people at the comedy club who knew that my schedule changed every 4 or 6 weeks depending on what rotation I was on or whether there were tests coming up," Dr. Nieder recalled. "If I called and said, 'Next week looks good for me. Can you get me on?' they were pretty accommodating."
With each year of medical school and subsequent residency training, he grew increasingly concerned that by becoming a physician he would "have less time for the creative stuff that I really liked," he explained. "I could see that [becoming a physician] wasn't going to make me happy. It was an agonizing decision for months: Do I give up this safe path? It was not a very popular decision with family and so forth, yet I decided to go for it."
He keeps up to date on health and medical news by reading articles in the mainstream and professional press. "I read, jot down notes, and every so often I will sit and gather all of those notes I've written and say, 'What's topical?'" he said. "What's funny? That's how I put together the material."
At a meeting of medical coders, Dr. Nieder shared the story of an elderly patient who had come to see him lamenting the aging process. "There are four things you lose as you grow old: You lose your hair, you lose your sex drive, and you lose your ability to do math," the man told him. "Those are the four things that you lose."