Leslie Bauer, DVM, DABVP (Canine and Feline Practice), wins the 2025 dvm360 Veterinary Hero award in the emergency category.
Leslie Bauer, DVM, DABVP (Canine and Feline Practice), is the medical director of Thrive Pet Healthcare Specialists in San Antonio, Texas, director of Thrive’s House Officer Steering Committee, and the national director of Thrive ER Academy, an emergency internship program. Since graduating from veterinary school, Bauer has dedicated all 23 years of her career to emergency medicine.
Her commitment to the profession stems from making a difference in patients’ and people’s lives, she shared with dvm360. “How often do you get to help somebody you know, every single day, and make a difference in their lives?” she posed. “There [are] not many other professions that get to do that—especially from an emergency medicine situation.”
“Every single day, I could be helping someone make a decision or helping a loved pet in [a client’s] life stay in their life a little bit longer. And there’s a lot of responsibility with that.... I have a lot of respect for being able to do this and to help people and make those changes,” she continued.
Bauer with a reptile patient.
In addition to helping patients and caregivers, Bauer also helps new veterinary graduates receive mentorship in emergency medicine and surgery through Thrive ER Academy, a program Bauer helped develop. The goal of the program, Bauer explained, is to provide new graduates with a strong mentorship foundation in emergency medicine to help them enter the profession. “We wanted people to be lifelong [emergency department] veterinarians and be comfortable with that,” she said. She added that another objective is to prevent burnout and help individuals discover a lifelong passion for emergency practice.
Bauer’s advice to veterinary professionals working in emergency medicine is to embrace the profession. “I think it’s hard the first few years. You're not coming out of vet school, and you don't know everything. I think we sometimes forget the passion that we had when we were trying to get into veterinary school and become a veterinarian,” she said. “All of a sudden, life catches up with us and we're like, ‘I may not want to really do this too much anymore. It's hard.’ And so, I think [it’s about] embracing it and realizing why you did this in the first place, and why you went through all that schooling and that training and just finding the joy and the happiness in this profession.”
“Yeah, there [are] going to be hard days, but we focus too much on the hard days, and we don’t focus on the great successes and the wonderful things that happen and how much joy [we] can get from [our] work.”
On her reaction to learning she had won the Veterinary Heroes Award in the Emergency category, Bauer shared, “It was very meaningful. There's a lot of work that goes into this, and definitely sometimes it feels like there's a lot of thankless days [but] to see [my staff’s] true, genuine joy that I had won this and that they had been able to help me achieve that was very meaningful and really speaks to the strength of our [hospital’s] culture: how much we all want to work together and celebrate each other’s successes and help each other when we don’t have successes.”
The 2025 class of dvm360 Veterinary Heroes will be honored at a celebratory luncheon in the dvm360 Fetch Kansas City Conference. Click here learn more or register for the event.
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