How to make an appointment
Before contacting us, please consider the following.
Check it's not an emergency.
Call 111 or 999 for urgent medical help if you have any of these, as your request will not be seen immediately.
- Crushing chest pain and tightness
- New drooping on one side of the face, slurred speech, difficulty raising your arms, weakness, or numbness on one side of your body.
- Severe difficulty breathing
- Heavy bleeding that won't stop
- Severe injuries
- Feeling suicidal, wanting to harm yourself, or others.
Appointments
Appointments can be made either by calling in to the surgery between 8.00am - 6.30pm, or by telephoning the surgery between 8.30am and 6.00pm Monday to Friday.
- Emergency calls only between 8 - 8.30am & 6 - 6.30pm
Call the Surgery on 01745 824111
We will ask you questions about why you need an appointment and will sometimes direct you to an alternative healthcare practitioner – this may be a pharmacist, dentist, optician, or other local service.
On the day appointments
These are available to book from 8.30am, and we aim to see (or speak if a telephone appointment is your preference) you on the same day as the request comes in.
Urgent appointments
If you feel you need to be seen urgently, please call the surgery and inform the care navigator.
You will be asked for a brief reason for the call to assist with your upcoming contact.
Under 16s
All children under 16 years of age with an acute (sudden or severe) presentation will be offered an appointment on the same day (this may be via telephone at your request, although it is usually advisable to opt for a face to face appointment for any physical problem, particularly for children).
Appointments are 10 minutes and for one person only.
Pre-bookable appointments
If you require a pre-bookable appointment rather than a same day appointment, please explain this to the care navigator who takes your call. They will message your own GP to arrange an appointment at the next available slot that is also suitable for you and the problem in question. For this reason, if you are able to explain a brief reason for the appointment request, this helps us to arrange an appropriate time. An example for this would be that if any swabs or samples might be needed, a morning appointment would be preferable. This helps us to help you make the most of your appointment time.
HOME VISITS
Home Visits are reserved for those who are most vulnerable and are unable to travel to the surgery to be seen.
We have better lighting, equipment, facilities, chaperones and access to medical notes available to aid your management in the surgery, partly for this reason we ask that you only request a home visit if the patient is too ill to attend or is housebound.
Whenever possible telephone before 10.00am and give the receptionist as much information as possible to enable the doctor to allocate priority to house calls.
A home visit may only seem like a matter of 15 minutes, but in the time it takes to travel to and see a patient, then return to the surgery, a GP could have seen 3 to 4 patients at the surgery or made 8 triage telephone calls.
Your visit may be performed by a GP other than your usual GP, this is dependent on the workload of the practice and availability of the doctors (due to illness, annual leave etc).
It does not harm children with a temperature to be brought out (they would have to go outside if they were ill enough to go to hospital), and they will not have to wait in the waiting room if you telephone the surgery before coming.
Lack of transport or convenience are not acceptable reasons for home visits. Following these guidelines will enable us to provide an efficient service for all patients.
OUT OF HOURS
Should you need to access to a doctor outside of surgery hours, please call NHS 111