A typical working week…
On a usual working day, I wake up at around 7am, except on Wednesdays when I work the late shift. Before I go to work, I enjoy reading a variety of newspapers, particularly The Guardian, The Times, The New York Times and the Irish Independent. As well as reading, I do my emails, answer lots of WhatsApp messages from colleagues around the world and keep up to date on the industry through social media. I arrive at work at 9am and see patients up until 1pm, when I have my lunch.
I usually see around 10 patients in the morning and eight in the afternoon on a normal medical day. It is interesting with lots of skin cancer appointments, and complex botulinum toxin concerns, especially Bell’s palsy cases and chronic migraines. We also conduct aesthetic medicine in both our Dublin and Cork clinics, and I can see a lot of patients during this time, sometimes 20-30 in a day. I have recently employed another doctor to share this workload. Our top treatments are botulinum toxin and dermal filler injectables. I also have a lot of acne and polycystic ovary syndrome dermatology patients, requiring Roaccutane and Spironolactone. These patients often need further treatment or a referral for hormonal problems, as well as laser resurfacing or radiofrequency microneedling for extensive acne scarring. My clinic team will perform other treatments including HIFU or vascular IPL. We have around 11 staff in each clinic, and I supervise and oversee the day-to-day running of the clinics as well as seeing patients.
I finish work at around 6pm where I catch up on any last-minute emails or messages. I like to spend my evenings relaxing or seeing friends at the local pub after work. Often, I will also spend this time preparing lectures for international conferences or writing – I wrote six books on a variety of topics in aesthetic medicine during the pandemic which are going through different stages of publication and drafts. Currently, we are releasing them every six months. My most recent book was called The Evolution of Aesthetic Medicine.
Opening up about complications…
Throughout my career, I have been fortunate enough to lecture internationally about my research within aesthetic medicine for which I have won many awards. One of my most popular lectures is about ‘20 Years of Dealing with Aesthetic Complications’. It details my views from a vast bank of complication experiences, from HIV lipodystrophy patients to dermal filler vascular occlusions. I like to be able to spread awareness of this in our industry, as dealing with a complication can be a stressful and difficult situation as a practitioner, so I think it’s important to have the correct tools and knowledge to be able to deal with one appropriately.
I’m also on the board of the IMCAS Academy Complications Alert (Paris) covering injectables, threads, lasers, energy-based devices, peels, and clinical dermatology. This Alert allows doctors to receive expert advice on complications, cases, or procedures. When a doctor selects the topic in which their case belongs, they can submit their case anonymously and it will be visible to the IMCAS Academy community of experts for them to answer. Being a board member of these associations allows for me to be at the leading edge of innovation in the aesthetic specialty whilst also ensuring that regulation standards are brought to the forefront of Government policy in Ireland. This is pivotal for our industry to ensure that the correct and most qualified practitioners are injecting patients. I conduct any external work, such as interviews, on Wednesdays.
Most memorable day…
My most memorable day in aesthetics probably was when I was treating Michael Jackson’s vitiligo. Nelson Mandela rang him, and he handed me the phone. I thought it was a concert promoter calling about a HIV concert we were organising in South Africa! After discussing the fact that we both had lived in Cape Town I mentioned that I had lived in Clifton, Camps Bay and Bantry Bay. He replied, “You know Cape Town better than me. I suppose I am really just a blow in.” I actually said, “Where did you live before that?” before Michael put his hand to his mouth, hurriedly pointed to the phone and said, “It’s Madiba!”
