Appointments

All of our consultations with a healthcare professional are by appointment only and can be booked by our reception team either in person at the surgery or by telephone on 0844 477 3625.

The reception staff will endeavour to give you a convenient and appropriate appointment with the doctor or nurse of your choice. If, however, they are unable to do so, they will suggest an alternative time or another doctor/nurse who is available. As a registered patient at this practice, you are free to consult with any of our doctors or practice nurses.

We are constantly reviewing our appointment system to reflect our patients’ needs and currently offer the following range of appointments.

Phone calls to the surgery during the peak time of 8.30 a.m. to 9.00 a.m. are restricted to only those patients requesting urgent “Same Day Access” appointments.

Same Day Access

These appointments are reserved for those patients who request urgent medical attention on the day. You will initially be seen by our nurse Practitioner, Sister Carroll, who will be able to deal with the majority of presenting conditions, including specifically the following minor illnesses:-

• Coughs, Colds, Chest Infections  Fever
• Earache Sore Throat
• Sore Eyes  Stomach Pains
• Sickness/Diarrhoea/Constipation Rashes/Eczema
• Urine Infection/Cystitis Nose Bleeds
• Foot Conditions

If however, following her initial triage assessment, she feels it is appropriate that you should also be seen by the on-call doctor for that day she will make the necessary arrangements.

Advance Booking – (from 1 day to four weeks ahead)

Appointments can be made with any of the doctors up to four weeks in advance. These slots are ideal for medication or chronic disease reviews and it is strongly recommended that they be used for this purpose where at all possible. These become available for booking from 9.00 a.m. each weekday.

Practice nurse Appointments – (Up to four weeks ahead)

Appointments with our practice nurse, Sister Gill, can be booked up to four weeks in advance. These appointments are suitable for patients who require cervical smears, contraception, travel advice etc. The nurse also runs our clinics for routine chronic disease management i.e. Asthma, Diabetes, Heart Disease.

Health Care Assistant Appointments – (Up to four weeks ahead)

Appointments with one of our health care assistants (HCA) can be booked up to four weeks in advance. These appointments are suitable for patients requiring routine blood pressure checks, blood tests, ECG recording, new patient checks, routine health checks etc.

Working Patients

For those patients who work 9.00 - 5.00pm and find it difficult to attend normal surgery hours there are slots available to book from 8.30am on Wednesday mornings. Again, these can be booked up to four weeks ahead.

Cancelling Appointments

If you have an appointment that you are unable to keep, please let the surgery know as soon as possible to enable the appointment to be re-allocated to another patient. Our telephone system offers the facility to leave a message to cancel an appointment, even if phoning outside normal surgery hours.

Whenever possible please always try to contact our reception team outside the hours of 8.30 a.m. to 10.00 a.m. when the phone lines are extremely busy.

Home Visits

If you are housebound, or your condition prevents you attending the surgery, a home visit may be requested. Please phone before 10.30 a.m. if a visit is required, as only emergency visits will be arranged after that time.

Please give the receptionist as much information as possible to enable the doctors to allocate priority to house calls.

Please remember that several patients can be seen at the surgery in the time it takes to do one home visit so this facility should only be requested if you are definitely unable to attend the surgery for medical reasons.

Telephone Consultations – (Up to four weeks ahead)

It is possible to gain non-urgent medical advice over the telephone from the GP. These appointments last five minutes and can be booked up to four weeks in advance.

When you book these appointments with the reception they will ask for your telephone number and arrange a time and day for the doctor to ring you back.

Disabled Access

Wheelchair access to the building is via the front and rear entrance. Patient services are provided at ground floor level where a disabled patients' WC is also located. If access proves difficult to any of our disabled patients we would be happy to consider ways of rectifying such problems.