With two children, a couple of dogs, a horse, and the little matter of being Principal Vet at Vets Now’s busy Belfast clinic, life is never dull for Sasha Burns Fraser. But Sasha is relishing the role she took up at the start of 2023, and she tells us how AdvantEdge helped her make the switch to ECC medicine.
What led you to become a vet?
My uncle was a vet who had some farm animals and I used to spend loads of time there as a child. So, I’ve always loved animals and wanted to be a vet, but I had to work very hard to get to vet school. I went to University College Dublin, which required four A-Levels rather than the three needed for other vet schools. I chose Dublin so I could drive home at the weekends and still be able to compete with my horse. I’ve had horses most of my life and I wasn’t prepared to give that up. I graduated in 2015.
What did you after that?
I had thought I’d do mixed, but I went into a small animal practice. My first clinic was a bit of a baptism of fire. I seemed to attract a lot of emergencies, which is where I got my passion for ECC. That was quite a change as I hated it at university and I’d thought that if I specialised or did more studies, it would be orthopaedics. But it didn’t faze me, and I found I coped with the pressure. I enjoyed being able to bring an animal back from the brink of death and I got so much job satisfaction.