If you are a registered user please click here to book an online appointment or repeat prescription request
The following points merit special mention:
1. If you wish to see a specific practitioner, you should specify this when you make your appointment. This may affect the time when an appointment can be given.
2. Due to the demand for GP appointments and the impact of wasted appointments when patients do not attend, you may book only one appointment with any GP at one time. Further appointments with any GP cannot be booked until the existing one has been attended (or cancelled).
3. When you arrive for your appointment the practice uses an automatic booking-in system that reduces the waiting time to book in. Please endeavour to use this simple system but in any case of difficulty there is always a receptionist available at the counter.
4. An appointment is for the patient for whom it was made and for that person alone. It is not appropriate to request an impromptu consultation for others who may have accompanied you to your appointment. This places unfair pressure on your doctor or practice nurse, who may feel obliged to comply despite not having sufficient time, and it also prejudices the care of those patients who have appointments following yours.
5. Punctuality is of the utmost importance. Please make every effort to attend at the appointment time as this facilitates the smooth running of the surgery for all concerned. The doctors will endeavour to ensure that you are seen at (or as close as possible to) the appointment time. Sometimes you may be seen slightly later than arranged, as the enormous variety of problems presenting to a doctor is unpredictable and is not always amenable to a strict timetable. However, you should note that if you are late the doctor may not be able to see you and you will be asked to rebook your appointment.
As part of our quality control measures we will always strive to overcome difficulties as they arise and maintain the highest standards of care. Please be patient - we will do everything possible to keep to the agreed times.
6. If you find that you will not be able to attend for your appointment, you should make sure that you inform the surgery. Please try to do this with more than one hour’s notice. If you do so, your appointment can be given to someone else. We have a dedicated line for this: please telephone (01925) 725644 and press 3. Patients who do not attend cost the practice about 50 appointments per week that equates to three doctors' surgeries each week.
Generally, you should be able to get an appointment to see a doctor within a maximum of three working days of your request.
7. If the doctor asks you to come back and see him again, please book this for Tuesday, Wednesday or Thursday.
8. If you need to speak to a doctor by telephone during working hours, you should ring the practice and tell them who you wish to speak to and the subject matter. This will be passed to the clinician involved who will in appropriate circumstances return the call. This will be outside surgery times and the exact time of the call cannot be guaranteed.
We depend on you to make every effort to attend the surgery if at all possible.
If you are too ill or infirm to attend, please telephone (01925) 725644 and press 2 BETWEEN 8.30 AND 10.30am. It can then be arranged for one of the doctors or the nurse practitioner to visit you at home. If, however, you telephone after 10.30am, your home visit will have to be dealt with by the duty doctor for the day, and such requests invariably interfere with that doctor's ability to deal with the day's emergency cases. Please note that lack of transport is not generally accepted as a reason for a home visit.
Please bear in mind that the doctor can see five patients in surgery in the time it takes to do one home visit. It is at the doctor's discretion whether or not a home visit is deemed necessary in each case. You may receive a telephone call from either the nurse practitioner or a doctor before a call is made.
If your condition is urgent and you can't wait for a routine appointment one of the doctors is on duty each weekday to cater for such emergencies. They are also on-call for emergency home visits.
It is clearly important that you do not request an emergency appointment if your condition can wait for a routine appointment. Any such abuse of the system is always a disappointment to the doctors and staff alike, and prejudices the level of care available to genuine emergency cases. If the doctor feels that your problem is inappropriate for the emergency surgery, they may ask you to make a routine appointment for a later date.
