Australian Survivor host Jonathan LaPaglia considers returning to medical career

He’s best known as host of Australian Survivor, but the pandemic has made actor and model Jonathan LaPaglia consider returning to his first job — as a doctor.

Doctor Jonathan LaPaglia — it has a good ring to it.

Survivor Australia: Blood v Water host LaPaglia says the pandemic has forced him to look at other career options, including returning to medicine.

Long before Survivor or his starring role as Dr Patrick McNaughton on TV drama Love Child, LaPaglia worked in the emergency ward in Adelaide as a physician.

Australian Survivor host Jonathan LaPaglia has considered returning to his medical career.

“I am still a doctor, I just haven’t practised in a long time so don’t ask me to do much more than a Band-Aid,” the brother of actor Anthony LaPaglia told Confidential.

“I have been off the bench for way too long.”

LaPaglia, 52, has been based in Los Angeles for many years and travels back to Australia for work, as he did for Survivor, with the new season premiering on Ten on January 31.

Returning to medicine is something he thinks about “all the time”.

“Especially during 2020 and 2021 with Covid, we had 12 months of lockdown here and I started toying with the idea,” he said.

“I even started looking at redoing my medical boards here in the US.”

LaPaglia has used some of his medical skills on the show.

His training does, however, come in handy despite the fact he hasn’t practised medicine officially since the ’90s.

“Conditions were so extreme this season (on Survivor), it was so hot out there that not surprisingly we had a couple of players collapse during challenges,” he explained.

“So I had to dust off the old cap and put the hosting aside for a minute and behave as a rusty old doctor.”

He continued: “The basics are still there.

“The information is old, but it stuck — but I would definitely need to go back and brush up if I was doing anything more than that.”