Dr Mitchell always knew she'd return to Gunnedah. But after graduating vet school in 2016, she wasn't quite ready to work so close to home. Instead, she took a job in a neighbouring town.
It was a baptism of fire... I was left to figure everything out myself. The practice owners were always out on call, and I couldn't reach anyone when I needed help because there was no phone reception.
While it was a challenge, she learned a lot. Clinically, but also about what she wanted from a workplace.
To reduce her commute, she returned to Gunnedah—a town of 12,000 people. However, she found that even there, mentorship was lacking. 'I was flying blind. The clinic was outdated, and I wasn't practicing the level of medicine I wanted to.' The hours weren't family-friendly, and commuting to Tamworth wasn't realistic with on-call duties.
With three young kids and a husband rooted in Gunnedah, she was burning out. So, in 2022, she took a leap of faith and bought the clinic! 'It was pretty wild', she laughs. 'I had a one-year-old, a three-year-old, and a four-year-old. I was working full-time and trying to learn everything—technology, payroll, recruiting—while keeping the clinic running.'
Luckily, she'd already spent five years in the clinic and had built up corporate knowledge. She'd been managing inventory, rostering, and accounts, which helped her hit the ground running. But being both a mentor, a manager and a clinician was a challenge. I could only hire new grads, and I had to support them while learning everything myself. It was hard. I'd try to squeeze in a webinar here and there, but it wasn't easy.'
She remembers the frustration of inheriting outdated procedures and equipment. New grads and nurses would ask, 'Why do we do it this way?' And Dr Mitchell realized – she didn't know: 'It was just what we had always done … We were still using cat gut!'
To get the support she needed to grow her practice even further, Dr Mitchell decided to upgrade her surgical capabilities with the CVE’s Surgery Distance Education course.
Dr Mitchell wanted to upgrade the hospital to perform new procedures, but with no one more senior than herself to call on, even knowing what instruments she needed to source was a struggle. 'If you don't know what you're looking for, you can't find it. Reps won't come out here. I learned how to use cautery over FaceTime.'
With the nearest specialist surgeon four hours away, her team often handles complex trauma and surgical cases: dog fights, pig hunting injuries, diaphragmatic hernias, ruptured spleens. 'These animals aren't stable enough to transfer. We have to do the surgery here.'
Which is just fine with Dr Mitchell: she always wanted to do surgery and even considered specialisation. To further her surgical knowledge, Dr Mitchell has taken plating courses. But the orthopaedic cases she and her team see in Gunnedah aren’t straight-forward. The team commonly treats comminuted tibial fractures and radius-ulna breaks in cats: topics they don’t cover in short courses.
I love learning. Just because we're in a small regional area doesn't mean we should be limited. We have the opportunity to do more and offer a bigger service.
Her passion for continuing education stems from her own experience. 'As a new grad, I was promised a week of study leave each year. I didn't get any CPD in the first five years (apart from occasional DPI courses on exotic diseases).' Now, as a practice owner, she's made CPD a priority.
I want my team to upskill. We schedule it in and make it happen.
Under Dr Mitchell’s leadership, the clinic has grown from three to six full time vets, with four on each day to allow flexibility. Holidays are covered with locums. Everyone does mixed practice, but personal preferences are catered for. On-call is shared, and everyone is skilled enough to handle emergencies. 'We've seen it all. It's wild what vet work is sometimes.'
She's especially proud of how the clinic handles wound healing since starting the CVE’s Surgery DE course.
We've used skin advancement and closure techniques to remove massive lumps and manage big wounds.
She loves how practical the resources provided in the course have been. Dr Mitchell explained that previously, 'we figured it out by doing it, but now I know better ways. I want my new grads to learn without having to make the same mistakes I did.'
Looking ahead, Dr Mitchell wants to improve emergency and trauma care after hours. 'We deal with a lot of it, and we can't hand it off. Getting all the staff upskilled in that area would be huge.'
Dr Mitchell is the change we all want to see in our profession. She provides her team with the tools they need and actively supports them while they grow. She’s a busy professional, but she still takes the time to mentor; because she knows firsthand how isolating and overwhelming veterinary work can be without guidance. Her leadership is grounded in empathy, experience, and a fierce commitment to doing better. Not just for her patients, but for her people. Dr Mitchell’s not just building a better practice—she’s building a better future for rural veterinary medicine.
Enrol in Surgery DE Course