Booking an Appointment

To make an appointment visit our consulting room.

We endeavour to provide a range of appointment times and surgeries/clinics to suit the needs of our patients. Our computer-held medical record system gives us the flexibility to offer patients this choice.

The Practice runs an appointment system for all consultations. Please ask for more than one appointment if you want more than one patient to be seen by the doctor or nurse. Appointments are generally booked at ten minute intervals, if you feel you may need a longer appointment because of complex problems please speak to the receptionist at the time of booking the appointment.

Appointment Types

We can offer a variety of appointment options for seeing a doctor or nurse:

• If your need is urgent and you wish to be seen that day, you will be offered an appointment in our minor illness clinic run by one of our highly trained nurse practitioners and supported by one of the doctors on duty.
• If you wish to see a doctor only, an appointment can be made up to four weeks ahead, subject to that doctor’s availability.
• If you need to see a nurse we can offer you an appointment up to four weeks ahead. We offer a range of nursing services, from blood taking and general nursing through to more specialist clinics and disease management surgeries.

Our reception team are there to guide you as to doctor and nurse availability and to tell what clinics are available and where. Please note that when arranging an appointment, our reception team may ask you to provide some basic information as to the nature of your need and for you to describe your symptoms. Please be assured this information is used purely to ensure that you get to see the most appropriate person to help you, saving you time and helping the practice manage our clinical staff effectively.

Chaperones

if you feel you would like a chaperone present at your consultation please inform the receptionist, doctor or nurse, who will be more than happy to arrange this for you.

Text messaging appointment reminder service

We offer a text messaging appointment reminder service. If you have a mobile number please inform reception who will update your records accordingly and enable this service for you.

Cancelling an Appointment

If you make an appointment to see a GP or nurse and then you find you are unable to attend, please let us know by using our online form or by ringing the surgery on 01255 674 373. If possible, you should ring the surgery at least 24 hours before, so we can make the appointment available to another patient.

The practice operates a strict policy on non attenders, therefore, patients who fail to attend for six booked appointments within a twelve month period, without cancelling, may be asked to register with another practice.

Late Attendance

Patients that attend too late for an appointment may be asked to either wait until the end of the surgery or make a further appointment for another day, depending on the circumstances.

The doctors and nurses do endeavour to run their surgeries to time, but this is not always possible. It is however, the clinicians decision on whether or not to see a patient that has attended too late for their appointment.

If you wish to contact the Doctor

Our reception team are trained to deal with routine enquires. You can arrange to leave messages for the doctors and ring back at a given time for an answer.

Contacting The Surgery By Telephone

The surgery gets very busy at times and you may find it difficult getting through to the practice during peak operating times.

To help manage incoming calls we have a telephone routing and queuing system that enables your call to be handled by the next available operator. Please be guided by the instructions when calling.

We also have the ability to record telephone calls that come through the main surgery site; this is used for training purposes.