About Us
Advanced veterinary care, with room to grow
Animal Referral Hospital, better known as ARH, is a network of emergency and specialist veterinary hospitals providing advanced care for animals with urgent, complex and referred conditions.
ARH’s history began in Sydney in 1999, and the network has since expanded across several states and territories. Today, ARH hospitals operate in New South Wales, Victoria, Queensland and the ACT, with individual hospitals offering different combinations of emergency, critical care and specialist referral services.
Work at the centre of complex patient care
For veterinary nurses and support team members who enjoy being closely involved in patient care, ARH offers an environment very different from routine general practice.
Depending on the hospital, teams may work across emergency and critical care, surgery, internal medicine, oncology, diagnostic imaging, rehabilitation and other specialist disciplines. Services vary between locations, but the network is built around combining emergency care with access to advanced veterinary expertise.
That multidisciplinary approach creates opportunities for nurses to be involved with patients requiring intensive monitoring, advanced diagnostics, anaesthesia, surgery and ongoing specialist treatment. At ARH Essendon Fields, for example, the ECC, Surgery and Medicine teams come together for daily hospital rounds to review patients and support continuity of care. The hospital also has nurses dedicated to areas including surgery, internal medicine, intensive care and emergency.
The facilities reflect the complexity of the work. ARH Essendon Fields has on-site MRI and CT imaging, fluoroscopy, ultrasound, surgical suites and an in-house laboratory, while ARH Homebush has advanced diagnostic imaging, dedicated surgical theatres and an intensive care unit. Facilities and services differ between hospitals, giving each ARH location its own clinical focus.