Workers in Poland's health sector are becoming increasingly impatient. This week both nurses and anaesthetists staged separate one-day protests about low pay and poor working conditions. With wages so low, many doctors are now being forced to take second jobs to supplement their income. But few, if any, can have as strange a dual career as the neurologist our Warsaw correspondent, James Coomarasamy, met.

The bubbly presenter from the music channel seemed to be getting into her part:

"Doctor, doctor," she said, "I've got such a headache. What do you think's wrong with me?"

With her hand draped over her brow in mock distress, she handed the microphone to the singer she was interviewing. "I don't know", he muttered, "but I think you might need a bit of music therapy."

If his voice didn't give it away, his hangdog expression certainly did. Kuba Senkewicz, lead singer of the pop group Electriczny Gitari, was hating every minute of the interview. Each time the director called for a break, the reluctant role-player scurried off the stage.

"I hate it when they make fun of medicine and people's suffering," he said later, as we sat in a cafe in the recording studios.

It would have sounded pompous coming from most rock stars, but not from Kuba. You see, he's not your common-or-garden pop singer.

It may have been hard to believe, but the person sitting in front of me with the scruffy checked shirt and faded jeans was a practising neurologist.

That's right, the man who's just had a number one hit with 'Killer', the title song to the most successful Polish film of recent years, is actually a healer.

He spends his days diagnosing Parkinson's Disease, his nights playing in concert halls. He's very serious about both professions and was intensely annoyed by the way the bubbly presenter had treated him.

Music and medicine, he told me were two totally separate things and should never be mixed. I took the hint. I'd already agreed to meet him at his clinic the following day, so I kept this conversation to purely musical matters.

I decided not to mention that most of his fans said Kuba's other job was one of the main reasons they liked him. Or that the band's keyboard player, Piotr, had said people trusted them more because their singer was a doctor.

Instead, we talked about Kuba's musical influences - The Beatles and Bob Dylan - and about his ironic, almost absurdist lyrics. But the earlier interview seemed to have unsettled him; he remained aloof and dispassionate.

"Music's just my hobby", he said. The only time I saw his eyes light up was when his erstwhile 'patient' swept past, followed by her entourage of giggling make-up girls. Kuba answered her smile with a look like a surgeon's knife.

The following day, I went to his clinic, not quite sure what to expect. It's a quiet place, far from the media spotlight and a line of mainly elderly patients was waiting outside his door. Most seemed blissfully unaware they were about to be treated by Poland's rocking doctor or that their grandchildren would have given a lot for the signature at the bottom of their prescriptions.

Inside his small, sparse room I found a completely different Kuba. He was wearing a regulation white coat and had a stethoscope draped over his shoulder like a guitar strap. But it wasn't just the clothes that had changed. As he spoke about the state of the Polish health system, Kuba the doctor displayed the passion and charisma I'd found lacking in Kuba the rock star.

"I only started in the pop business for economic reasons," he said. "Even a specialist can't afford to support his family without a second job."

He told me just how serious the situation was, in a country where nurses earn little more than the minimum wage and where anaesthetists end up knocking themselves out because their equipment is so old and leaking.

The day before, he'd been hesitant, picking his words carefully. In the safety of his office he was outspoken. Polish doctors, Kuba said, were corrupt. Surgeons take bribes to carry out operations and patients up and down the country were suffering as a result.

"We have to fight this together. Doctors and nurses need solidarity," he said.

Kuba was in full flow when his mobile phone rang. Its hostile tone seemed to shake him - to bring him back, with a bump, to his other, less real world. He picked the phone out of his bag and his voice immediately softened.

"Don't worry. I haven't forgotten," Kuba told the person at the other end, "the sound check's at seven."
 

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