Working Life: Dr Rukshan Goonewardena, GP Principal, Ballyjamesduff, Co Cavan

Dr Rukshan Goonewardena is a GP Principal in Ballyjamesduff, Co Cavan.

6.30am

Our two-year-old son Bennett joins us in the bedroom early in the morning, followed by our daughter Serena, four. We play with the kids for a while before breakfast.

My wife Emer is also a GP and we work at the same practice.

8.30am

I clear some paperwork before seeing patients. We see four to six patients an hour, and we treat everything from a sore throat to a heart attack, from the mundane to the drama of a helicopter landing at the football pitch next door in the event of an emergency.

9am

In addition to treating all the usual complaints that you see in a GP surgery, we offer a number of special services — in the area of women’s health, sexual health, and men’s health. We do STI screening, fit intrauterine birth control systems, and offer menopause and aesthetics consultations.

We also recently took part in a nurse-led pain management programme which aimed to improve quality of life for people with persistent pain.

For me, it clearly demonstrated the impact advice and education can have on this patient group.

12pm

Morning surgery finishes and I get down to more paperwork writing prescriptions, reviewing blood results and clinic letters. As well as myself and Emer, we have a great team of two nurses and two secretaries.

1-2pm

We sometimes have to do house calls and nursing home visits during lunchtime because having two small children restricts our availability in the evenings.

2pm

We start the afternoon session. It’s a very busy practice and overall, I am very positive about my job. However, it does have its frustrations — excessive outpatient waiting times, and the increasing workload with cuts to resources becomes frustrating. We used to do same-day appointments, but now, we only see urgent patients on the same day, and others may have to wait.

5pm

I try to finish up so that we can get home to our kids. Finishing on time means we sometimes have to play catch-up with paperwork at weekends. The evenings are about family time and possibly a barbecue if the weather is nice.

We head to Dublin or to the beautiful beaches of Donegal during weekends, where we enjoy time with the kids and I indulge in my pet hobby, photography.