Appointments

How to Request an Appointment

You can make an appointment in the following ways:

Urgent Appointments

If you ask for an ‘urgent’ or ‘same day’ appointment, we expect you to accept any offered appointments, i.e. if a patient advises that an urgent appointment is required and is offered an appointment in the morning, they are expected to accept that appointment. It is not possible for patients to ask for an ‘urgent’ or ‘same day’ appointment but stipulate that they will only attend late afternoon, only see a doctor, only see a male or female clinician.

Patients will be offered an appointment with the most appropriate clinician which may not be a doctor.

Please ensure a separate appointment is requested for each person seeing any clinician.

Routine Appointments

There are some GP, Advanced Nurse Practitioner and Physician Associate  appointments available to be booked in advance.

All clinicians reserve the right to ask you to book a further appointment if you present more than one problem in a single appointment.

Same Day Appointments

The practice operates a system where there are same day appointments available with a GP, Advanced Nurse Practitioner or Physician Associate these can be by Telephone or Face to Face.

If you obtain a same day appointment this does not mean that you will definitely be able to see your usual doctor.

If you request a same day appointment, we expect you to be willing to see whichever clinician, GP, Advanced Nurse Practitioner or Physician Associate is offered at the time offered.

The practice may use locum doctors to provide some additional cover as necessary.

The Advance Nurse Practitioner is a clinician who has undergone considerable extra training to nurse practitioner degree level and who undertakes much of the work traditionally carried out by a doctor. They will be able to help you, including generating a prescription if needed or, when occasionally necessary, refer you on to a doctor during the appointment.

Sick Children

Sick children will always be seen as soon as possible. If there are no appointments available, the receptionist will advise you when to bring them in.

Other Appointments

The practice operates a system for the nursing team where we offer pre-book appointments up to eight weeks in advance. The receptionist will ask what type of appointment is required so that the appropriate time can be allocated. The receptionist will also direct you to the most appropriate member of the nursing team. Some longer appointments for areas such as chronic disease reviews may not be available until late morning.

Attending Your Appointment

On arrival for your appointment please use the self-check-in or report to the receptionist, you will then need to go to the appropriate waiting area. The clinician will call you in when they are ready to see you.

Our clinicians do try to keep to time but unavoidable delays occasionally happen.  Please be patient if you have to wait as the clinician may be dealing with an emergency or complicated problem.

Remember, next time it could be that you needs extra help.

If you are more than five minutes late, the receptionist will ask the doctor or nurse whether they can see you, but it may be necessary to wait or rebook. It is often not possible to see you if this would mean that all the following patients would be unnecessarily delayed.

Cancelling Appointments

If you make an appointment that you subsequently do not need, please cancel the appointment thus enabling that appointment to be offered to another patient. You can do this by using our Cancel an Appointment triage.

Appointment Reminders

While the service is funded by the NHS, the practice will attempt to issue appointment reminders by SMS message to your mobile phone provided you have consented to receipt of SMS messages. The patient remains responsible for remembering their appointment. The practice accepts no responsibility if, for whatever reason, no SMS message is sent or received.