Appointments

How to request an appointment

You can request an appointment in the following ways:

On the day appointments

If you feel that you need to see a doctor for an on the day matter, we will take your details and will be able to either allocate an appointment with a practice nurse (if appropriate) or will arrange for help from a duty doctor. Your enquiry will be assessed by the doctor and will result in advice being relayed to you by either a telephone call from the duty doctor or an appointment made with a doctor or nurse.

Allocation of urgent appointments with either a doctor or nurse is entirely at the duty doctor’s discretion and will be based on their assessment of your current condition and needs. These appointments are 10 minutes long and are therefore designed to deal with the reason you called and not for secondary problems or any long term/chronic conditions. These will require a routine appointment.

The receptionists cannot predict which on call duty doctor will contact you as they organise their own workload. Urgent medical conditions will always take precedence over other matters and therefore the timescale in handling your enquiry will reflect the priority of the problem.

If you are contacting on behalf of someone else (over 16 years old) we will need to have their consent to discuss any matters with you. Patients should contact the practice themselves where possible.

The receptionists have been asked by the GP Partners to ask patients for details of the reason they need to be seen. This is to enable the receptionist to direct patients to the correct clinician and the appropriate appointment.

Routine appointments

For routine and non-urgent matters we encourage advance booking with the doctor of your choice. These appointments book up quickly so we kindly ask that if you are unable to keep an appointment, you let us know as soon as possible.

Telephone advice – Non-urgent matters

If you think that your non-urgent problem could be resolved by talking to a doctor on the telephone, please request a telephone appointment with the doctor of your choice. These appointments are limited in number so you may have to wait a few days before an appointment becomes available. If you would like to speak to a nurse for advice, please complete our Request an appointment with a Nurse or Healthcare Assistant form.

Assistance during appointments

Should you need any help at an appointment e.g. a chaperone, an interpreter, a hearing loop, a low level desk, a private area or any other general assistance, please let us know when requesting your appointment.

Patients not recently seen

  • Patients over 16 years and under 75 years who have not seen a clinician in the previous three years may request a consultation.
  • Patients over 75 years who have not seen a clinician in the previous 12 months may request a consultation.

Cancellations and failing to attend

A very significant amount of valuable time is wasted by patients failing to attend their appointments. This delays or obstructs other patients in need from getting medical assistance and we therefore take a very dim view of such patients.

Appointments can be cancelled by:

If a patient fails to attend for more than one consultation in a 3 month period, it is practice policy to bring this to their attention in writing in order to avoid it happening again.

If in spite of this, a patient repeatedly fails to attend without informing us, we will write to them and may need to assume that they no longer wish to remain on our list. We will then submit a request to the health authority for the patient to be removed. This gives patients 28 days to register at an alternative practice. However, we will still be able to treat the patient for any urgent matters until the 28 day limit has expired.