Advice enquiries

Visit our Exotics section for advice on exotic species

The Advice Request Form should be used for non-urgent and chronic matters. Please call us on 0131 650 7650 if you have an urgent/emergent query.

Please ensure you select the relevant referral service that you would like to receive your advice request. A member of this specialist service will aim to contact you within 48 hours of receipt of your email. This service is only available Monday to Friday during normal working hours (9am-5pm).

Please be aware that our clinicians have clinical and teaching commitments so it can be difficult to respond at a specific time. It helps us if you are able to give a range of contact times. We have requested contact details for other members of your staff in order to help ensure your practice receives a prompt reply.

Our advice will be provided in good faith but we must remind you that any decisions based upon it remain your responsibility, and the respective animal(s) under your care. We hope that both you and your client benefit from the advice received. We are constantly trying to improve the service that we can offer to our referring practices and, as a teaching hospital, we pride ourselves on providing information to practicing vets.

For referral services other than Internal Medicine/Dermatology, there currently isn’t a fee for advice requests. Please send the advice request form via the website and other relevant documents or information via separate email to HfSAreception@ed.ac.uk. However, we reserve the right to send your advice request to a different Service than the one selected if felt appropriate by our clinicians (if this is medicine or dermatology you will be charged).

For advice requests to our canine or feline internal medicine and dermatology referral service:

Due to the increasing volume of advice requests received, we are trialling (from the 01/11/2023) a new two-tiered advice request system. Please see more about this below.

For Internal Medicine advice, we request that you initially ONLY fill in the advice request form. Please provide us with a summary that gives details of the relevant clinical information, timeline, and relevant test results. Please also formulate a specific question on the advice you are seeking. If there is sufficient information provided to answer your question, we will contact you with advice (via phone or email). Due to time constraints we cannot look through the animal’s entire history.

If the specialists need additional information or you were seeking advice on a specific series of test results or images, we will request this separately from you via email. Based on the complexity of the question and number of results to be assessed, the clinicians will then come back to you with a more comprehensive plan/answer to your query.

The standard advice fee is £70. There is a £35 fee for follow-up questions and/or simple requests. A full review of the history, laboratory findings and/or photos of complex and in-depth cases may incur a fee £140.

Our radiology specialist team does currently not provide a stand alone consultation service.