GP honoured for lifetime of dedication

‘Serve. Love. Care.’
 
This has been Dr Rajeshwary Krishnan’s motto across more than 40 years of general practice.
 
‘We’re given a gift, so we really should serve humanity,’ she tells newsGP.
 
It is little surprise then that the GP affectionately known as ‘Dr Raji’ is now also known as the RACGP’s 2025 GP of the Year after receiving the award at last month’s GP25 conference.
 
In her nomination, Dr Raji was described as ‘a true generalist providing comprehensive primary health care and an unwavering service to Australia’s vulnerable communities and First Nations Peoples’.  
 
For the past four years Dr Raji has been the co-director of the Pramana Medical Centre in Gosnells, Western Australia, with a mainly Aboriginal patient clientele.
 
About 20 kilometres south of Perth, Gosnells is located on Nyoongar country, an ‘area of unmet need’ according to Dr Raji’s daughter and practice co-director Dr Priya Krishnan.
 
The pair founded the practice in 2020 with just one nurse and a receptionist.
 
Today they are supported by five more GPs, four practice nurses, a six-person allied health team and administrative staff, bringing together an interdisciplinary model of care that Dr Raji always envisioned doing in her own practice.
 
‘We are aware there is absolutely no way you can work in Aboriginal health without a team-based approach,’ says Dr Priya, ‘which is what most of the ACCHOs do anyway, and they do it really beautifully.’
 
‘The difference, I guess, between us and the ACCHOs is that because we give a service that is not Aboriginal-run, it is sometimes easier to access for some of the Aboriginal patients, because of the fact that they may know someone, or family members may be privy to their information, or whatever it may be.
 
‘The other reason is, of course, the relationship that they have had with Mum for so many years. They’re just comfortable with her.’
 
Such is Dr Raji’s dedication, she still works seven days a week, often until 8pm. Still, there was no doubting her dedication from the very beginning of her career.
 
Dr Raji trained as a GP in India and was practising as an obstetrician and a gynaecologist when she migrated to Australia with her husband in the late 1970s.
 
However, her qualification wasn’t recognised in Australia. To work as a GP here, she had to repeat her fifth and sixth years of training.
 
Then, she fell pregnant with her daughter.
 
With her husband heading up the Department of Japanese Studies at the University of Western Australia, and no one else to help care for baby Priya while she completed her study, Dr Raji made the difficult decision to send her daughter back to India to live with her parents for the next two years.
 
‘It was a bit of a traumatic time for her. The two of them were really busy setting up life. And then I came along and disrupted it,’ Dr Priya laughs.
 
Dr Priya says her mother would have liked to return to obstetrics work, but ‘it would have just been another huge effort to try and qualify in that after everything’.
 
So, Dr Raji went straight into general practice, joining Gosnells’ local Aboriginal Medical Service, now known as Derbarl Yerrigan Medical Service.
 
Dr Raji worked there full time for some 25 years, building trust and relationships with ‘generations of patients’, says her daughter.
 
After that she moved into palliative care work, and working for the not-for-profit organisation 360 Street Doctor mobile clinic that operates throughout Western Australia.
 
‘She just jumped around. And she loves doing that, she’s very eclectic with her work,’ says Dr Priya.
 
But it doesn’t matter where Dr Raji works – her patients ‘follow her everywhere’, says Dr Priya.
 
For Dr Raji, she loves her work, and loves to ‘make a difference’.
 
‘I can’t change the whole world, but I can change the person who comes in contact with me,’ Dr Raji says.
 
‘When they leave my room, honestly, at times after they leave, I feel so teary, because they bless you from the bottom of their heart. They say, “God bless you, Dr Raji”.
 
‘They give those words and I tell you, I don’t need any more than that, I don’t need any reward.’
 
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Aboriginal health ACCHO GP of the Year Western Australia