Appointments

Booking an Appointment

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GP Appointments

Please call as soon as possible after 8 am if you need to speak to a clinician that day in relation to a medical problem.  If you have been asked to speak to a GP about recent results or your medication, this is considered a routine appointment and can be booked for the next available time with the GP of your choice.

If you need to be seen in the practice, you will be offered a face to face appointment.

To enable us to deal with your call efficiently, the reception staff will ask you for some information so that they can direct the call to the correct health professional. 

Only review or blood appointments after seeing a clinician can be made at reception desk. We need to respect patient confidentiality so ask that you phone the practice to make an appointment for any of the clinicians. Thank you for your understanding.

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Practice Nurse Appointments

• Patients can book up to 6 – 8 weeks in advance for practice nurse appointments.

• If you have a chronic disease e.g. coronary heart disease, asthma etc you will be sent letters throughout the year asking you to make an appointment for review if this is due. 

• We appreciate that it can time-consuming for patients making appointments for the practice nurses. This is largely due to the fact that the nurses see patients for a variety of reasons and it is important that the correct amount of time is allocated for the appointment depending on why the patient needs to see the nurse.

• The reception staff also have to establish whether you require a blood test before you see the nurse and what kind of blood test is needed. When making an appointment, it would be useful if you had your recall letter to hand so that you can read this out to the receptionist.

Please see below-allocated appointment times for the practice nurse:

– 10 mins – Smear, Family Planning, Hypertension, New Patient Medical.

– 20 mins – Asthma, Diabetes, Heart Disease, Stroke, Kidney disease, Travel advice, Epilepsy, Thyroid review, Smoking cessation review (not 1st visit).

– 30 mins – Lung disease, Implanon insertion and removal, Yellow fever, smoking cessation (1st appointment only).

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How Can You Help?

• Patients should only phone at 8 am if their need is urgent and they require to speak to a clinician that day.

• If a GP asks you to return in a set time for review and this is outwith the four week period limit, contact the practice as soon as practical to make your appointment.

• Consider whether you need to see the GP face to face or whether a telephone consultation should suffice before contacting the practice.

• One appointment – one patient – please do not ask the doctor or nurse to see other members of your family during your appointment as this will cause a delay for others.

• If there are no appointments but you believe you have an urgent medical problem, please make this clear to the reception staff.

• Please use our check in screen when you arrive for your appointment. This will inform the clinician you are in the waiting area. If you have been waiting for over 20 minuets please let our reception team know.

• Emergency appointments are available if you feel you have a problem which needs urgent attention on the same day and cannot await a routine consultation. It may not be possible, however, to see the doctor you normally see. These emergency appointments are not for repeat prescriptions, review of ongoing problems, sick notes etc.

• Please cancel any appointment that is no longer needed as far in advance as possible.