About Dr Carina

I’ve been a veterinarian for twenty years. I still think what we do matters.

In that time I've been a new graduate, an associate, a senior veterinarian, a veterinary director, a mentor and an educator. I’ve worked across mixed, large-animal and now small-animal practices in both Australia and Denmark, in privately owned clinics and corporate ones. I've sat on clinic-management teams, advisory groups and mentoring programs, including ten years mentoring with the Australian Veterinary Association. I'm still in practice, and still curious about the medicine.

What two decades has given me is a clear view of the gap in our profession. The advances in animal care have been extraordinary. But the health of the people providing that care has gone the other way. I've watched capable colleagues leave, reduce their hours, move from job to job looking for one they can tolerate, and conclude that they were the problem.

They weren't. I don't believe we have a mental health crisis. I believe we have an occupational crisis, and that distinction changes everything about what we do next. Resilience training asks you to get up despite your circumstances. I'd rather examine the circumstances while supporting resilience in parallel.

So I love what we DO as veterinarians. What I've come to dislike is what is being done TO veterinarians. Addressing that is how I intend to spend the rest of my career — by supporting individual veterinarians to thrive in this work, and by pushing for workplace reform that genuinely serves staff, clients and animals.

The way I do this is through conversation and mentoring. Insight into how you think about this profession. The empowerment that insight brings. And the agency to be an active participant in your own career, rather than a passenger in it.

My aim is for you to tap into this profession, not tap out of it.