On today’s show, I’m delighted to welcome one of the most well-read, insanely qualified and awesome people in veterinary medicine you’ve most likely never heard of, Dr Sheilah Robertson.

Sheilah grew up in Scotland and graduated from Glasgow University. Her career in veterinary medicine spans more than three decades and encompasses numerous roles and qualifications acquiring four diplomas and one PhD while teaching at schools in the United Kingdom, Canada and the United States.

Sheilah has held many prestigious positions including work with AVMA, she's a two-time member of the American Animal Hospital Association and American Association of Feline Practitioners Pain Management Taskforce. And has served as the president of the American College of Veterinary Anesthesia and Analgesia.

That’s saying nothing of the massive list of publications she has written or contributed two including two books. It’s safe to say she’s a titan in the world of anaesthesia and pain management.

In 2017, Sheilah joined Lap of Love Veterinary Hospice as the Senior Medical Director. Where the rumour has it that the company had to reduce their font by two points to come anywhere near getting all of the alphabet of letters onto her business card!

I’m not going to read it out here but in the show notes you can see for yourself, she has so many letters after her name it’s like someone got very loose with a can of alphabet spaghetti.

Now, just before we jump into the episode, I just wanted to drop a quick word from our show sponsor which today is the VetX Graduate Mentoring community. If you are a practice owner and want to offer your new vets a greater level of support so they grow faster and stay longer with your practice, then jump onto my website drdavenicol.com/vetx-grad and learn how we are helping graduates across the world thrive in practices just like yours. The class is open for global entry now so check it out.

This episode ranks as one of my favourites (I know I say that a lot and I genuinely mean it each time). The reason being that Sheilah is such a warm, friendly and humble person with a great sense of humour. It really was a joy to listen and learn from her. The time just flew past I could have talked for hours more.

So without further ado, I present to you, my interview with the amazing Dr Sheilah Robertson.

In the course of our talk, we cover many topics including:

1. Anaesthesia safety tips and risk you probably didn’t know before - my eyes were certainly opened.
2. Why and anaesthesiologist would move to work with an end of life care business.
3. What we can be doing to improve care for geriatric patients.
4. She spells out a great anaesthetic protocol for older pets for dental work.
5. How to improve anaesthesia and mortality in cats.
6. What the big ethical dilemmas are in veterinary medicine.