Sancta alumni in focus: Dr Ashe Debiasio (FR 2010)

Making Miracles Out of Misfortunes

By Siena Fagan

A hepatopancreaticobiliary surgical fellow does not have a ‘typical’ day in the life.

Dr Ashé DeBiasio is not a morning person. She wakes up as late as possible to still be at work on time. That is, at 5:30am.

She arrives at the Royal North Shore Hospital at 6:30am, coffee in hand. Then comes the onslaught of her busy day: check-ins with overnight patients, rounds with her teams, pre-surgery meetings, hours-long operations, and late nights of research and studying.

On the day that I met Ashé, she was going to be on-call that night. The day prior, she left work a bit early to make sure that she had a full night’s sleep: at 8:30pm.

Ashé is just at the beginning of her career, but has been working towards it for more than a decade.

In 2010, she moved to Sydney from Taree in regional NSW to study a Bachelor of Science at the University of Sydney. At the time, she had been planning on becoming an investment banker.

“I realised pretty quickly that I might be good at mathematics but it’s not something that brings me joy.”

But living at Sancta, Ashé met a number of Medicine students, who helped pique her interest in the degree.

From then on, she had her sights set on a new path, driven by a staunch intention that no matter what her career was, it had to be making a positive impact on society.

That’s what drew her to studying liver surgery.

“I also realised as I went through my degree that I really need a lot of human interaction in my job and I need more immediate results… So with medicine, I could at least feel like I’m making a difference today.”

Her first real experience of making this tangible difference was in the first few weeks of her Doctor of Medicine at the University of Sydney, when she had the opportunity to scrub-in on liver transplant surgeries.

Scrubbed in at the RPA hospital, Ashé uncovered the sad beauty of transplant surgeries: taking a tragic loss, and making some meaning of it.

“…that is really what drove me in that direction: it’s an amazing surgery, but also the fact that I could actually get involved in something that seems almost miraculous…”

It’s clear that Ashé has found a way to really impact people’s lives. From the way she gifts a crossword book to a particularly lonely patient, or describes the joy of walking a little kid into surgery, or walks a family through a difficult diagnosis.

Ashé is kind, and caring, and gives the gift of compassion to all those she comes into contact with, patient or otherwise.

But life has not always come easy.

“I don’t talk about it all the time, but there were times in my life when I was a kid where we really didn’t have money,” Ashé said.

“I understand when people may not be able to afford food or may not be able to afford medications or when their health may not be their first priority.

“Education is really important in my family… but without a scholarship, there was absolutely no way my sister and I were both going to university.”

Ashé was the inaugural JT Clark Rural Student Scholarship recipient, funded by Sancta alumna Rachel Launders (FR 1986) and her husband, Paul Clark. The scholarship is for female undergraduates with financial need, moving from regional and rural areas.

“I don’t want to understate the fact that the scholarships that I received and the help that I received, a lot of that was financial, and there was a lot of other help that I received that was emotional and physical and all of those other things.”

During her studies, Ashé continued to work hard. She worked nearly full-time while keeping up the GPA required to be accepted into postgrad medicine at the University of Sydney.

It’s thankless work at times, but it’s all worthwhile to her. And now, as a single woman in her thirties, she is proud to be able to support herself.

While juggling her busy uni years, it was a piece of advice from her former step-dad that stuck with her.

“Aim low, go slow,” she recalls, with a slight smile on her face.

“Part of it is remembering why you’re actually doing it. And then part of it is just saying, I’ll just do the next task. And I’m not going to try and be perfect on every single thing.”

It’s stellar advice for any young person, overwhelmed by study and work. But, she has her own advice for aspiring doctors.

“There’s a lot of pessimism in medicine right now… but I think one of the things that I would say is make sure that you really think about why you want to do medicine, and make sure that you’re doing it for yourself.”

Dr Ashé DeBiasio lives this passion, and will continue to pursue it.

As part of her fellowship, she must change hospitals and states or countries every twelve months. Last year, she studied at a hospital in Auckland. Next year, she sets off for Calgary.

One day, Ashé hopes to be back in Sydney, working on Liver Cancer cases, and providing services to under-resourced hospitals on the Central Coast.

About the author

Siena Fagan (FR 2023) is in her third year of studying a Bachelor of Arts and a Bachelor of Advanced Studies (Media & Communications and Economic Policy) at the University of Sydney. She works part-time as a producer at the ABC, but hopes to become a newspaper reporter when she graduates.