If the demands of government take their toll on politicians' health in a restored Northern Ireland Assembly, they could have three GP colleagues to turn to for advice. Margaret Canninggets an insight into family life, medicine and politics from the three election hopefuls
Mixing politics and medicine has meant a hectic lifestyle for Drs Josephine Deehan, Alasdair McDonnell and Kieran Deeny.
For Dr Deehan, a GP in Omagh and candidate for the nationalist Social Democratic Labour Party in west Tyrone, politics comes a close second to medicine.
Her career and interests have spanned academic physiology, marriage guidance, psychiatry as well as politics and her husband and six children.
As it is, she works a 16-hour day between political commitments as a local councillor and her patients but says: "I would never give up my medicine.
"I work very hard but I am blessed with great health and with great energy.
"I would see myself very much as a people's person. I have spent a lot of my life heavily involved with people as a doctor and I've used a lot of energy meeting the needs of people."
Being a doctor has given her a visibility other candidates may lack.
"When you canvass, people will often say that you only see politicians when there is an election. When I go around they say, 'Hello Dr Deehan,' so it is much more personal."
She worries about provision for children with autism and attention deficit/hyperactivity disorder and their families and the fact that the Western Health and Social Services Board, which includes west Tyrone, has the highest incidence of dental decay in the United Kingdom.
"I can bring all these issues directly to the Assembly's health committee," she says.
An issue which thrust a fellow west Tyrone medic into politics was the threat of the removal of acute services from Tyrone County Hospital in Omagh - a threat which became reality in March last year.
Accident and emergency services were consolidated at Enniskillen's Erne Hospital about 30 miles away and were replaced with an urgent care unit for minor injuries in Omagh. Maternity services had already been removed.
Threats to services saw Carrickmore GP Kieran Deeny contest Assembly elections as an independent in 2003.
He topped the poll in a high-profile victory in 2003 and came second in the 2005 general election.
He is impatient with detractors who dismiss his present campaign as irrelevant now that services are gone.
"Everybody in Tyrone is concerned about this. The problem of health is getting worse. No one who is frontline medicine can feel comfortable.
"Only in the last few weeks we have had two mothers giving birth in dreadful conditions.
"One gave birth on the bathroom floor of her house. Another one gave birth in urgent care but without a paediatrician and without a midwife. A doctor was sent down from Enniskillen but there was no specialist.
"These are Third World conditions. It's not a health service but a health crisis. Elective medicine we don't have a problem with, but it's the life and death emergencies.
"We are putting mothers and children in an appalling situation. This is happening in the largest of the six counties and that's how I ended up in politics," he says.
"Doctors and nurses have shouted about this for years but no one ever listened until I became a politician."
The UCD graduate is originally from Downpatrick but has lived in Carrickmore for 21 years. He and his wife have three children - "the three reasons why I am campaigning. I don't want my children exposed to the risks they are exposed to now."
The potential Assembly doctor with the most on his political plate is SDLP MP for south Belfast, Dr Alasdair McDonnell, a family doctor in a practice on Ormeau Road.
He went part-time in the practice when he was first elected to the Northern Ireland Assembly in 1998.
"Now I only do two half-days, largely just to keep a licence alive.
"The pressures are very severe. I'm working a seven-day week and most of those are 12-hour days."
He says his partners have been accommodating and his politics are "factored in".
He and his wife have four children aged eight, six, four and one-and-a-half. "It's a constant juggle between home, the political agenda and keeping a medical iron in the fire."
One ritual he tries to keep sacrosanct is sharing a pot of mussels with his three older children on a Friday night.
"I didn't eat mussels until I was 30 years of age so maybe there are some advantages to having an MP as a father, even though there are a lot of disadvantages."
Time pressures have meant he has delegated many of his patients, but the others are pleased to have a GP MP looking after their health.
"They feel good, I suppose, is the simplest way of putting it, of thinking that they have a close personal relationship with me as a GP and yet that I'm an MP."
He says he's happy to help with extra-curricular concerns they bring to him.
The occasional patient isn't adverse to exploiting his doctor's electoral challenges for private gain.
One patient presented him with a bottle of Hennessy brandy in thanks for a £1,000 win following a bet on McDonnell for south Belfast in the 2005 general election.
"He reckons he owes me a bottle of brandy as a result of his good luck," McDonnell says.