Booking an Appointment

Appointments

Our current appointment system has been developed to reflect our patient’s needs.   As a result of this, we now have early, late, advance book and book on the day appointments.

Calendar

Our current system is as follows:-

1. Advance booking of appointments
You are able to book appointments up to 4 weeks in advance to see a Doctor or a Nurse. These appointments can be booked by attending in person, online or by telephone.

If you feel that you may need more than the usual time for an appointment (each appointment is 10 minutes long) then please mention this to the receptionist when booking and we will do our best to accommodate you. Surgery time is limited as the doctors have to do home visits, prescriptions, referrals and reports after surgery have finished.

2. Advance booking by the internet
These can be booked by logging onto our online system via our website. You will need to register to access this service. Please ask reception staff for more details. You can register online via the following link: https://patient.emisaccess.co.uk

3. Book on the day appointments
There are doctor’s appointments made available each day which is only available to book on the day. These appointments will be released at 8am each morning for the morning and afternoon.

These can only be booked by telephone.

4. Emergency appointments
We endeavour to see all the patients presenting with an urgent medical problem. However, please call the surgery if you feel you need to be seen urgently and a Doctor will assess your case in order to provide the most appropriate cause of action. This may include requesting that you visit the surgery, providing you with a prescription or suggesting a more appropriate pathway of care (i.e. A&E)

Practice Nurses

In a number of cases, it might be worth considering an appointment with a practice nurse rather than a doctor. Practice nurses are qualified to deal with many ailments and you may be seen more quickly.

It is advisable that a responsible adult should accompany children under the age of 16.

Please bear in mind that an appointment is for one person only – if, for example, you need to be seen as well as your child then you will need two separate appointments.

Cancellations

If you cannot attend an appointment for any reason then we please ask that you inform us as soon as possible in order for us to provide your appointment slot to another patient.

You can book a face to face appointment in advance with a doctor or nurse by telephone or by calling into the surgery. We always try to offer you an appointment on the day you want it but this may not always be possible. You can also book an appointment on the internet. Remember you need to have registered to use this service – please ask at Reception

If your problem is urgent, you will be seen on the same day, usually by the doctor on-duty at the end of his/her surgery.

Patients who wish to be seen on the same day may be triaged by a Doctor. This means that the receptionist will take your details and a Doctor will telephone you back. During this telephone call, the Doctor will assess your needs and, if required, agree a mutually convenient time for you to attend at the surgery

PLEASE REMEMBER that our doctors are very busy and only have a 10-minute slot per problem per appointment. Please book a double appointment if you wish to discuss an additional problem.

Telephone Advice

Only very urgent calls will be put through to the doctor during surgery hours. If possible, please tell the receptionist what the call is about so we can assess how urgent the situation is.

Preference of Practitioner

All patients are now registered with the practice and not with a specific doctor but patients may express a preference to see a particular doctor when making appointments. In the event that your preferred doctor is unavailable, the practice will offer you another doctor. If you insist upon waiting to see a specific doctor, then this will depend on upon that doctor’s availability and may result in you having to wait longer than the 48 hours anticipated in the NHS Plan.

If you are late

Appointments will be held for you for up to 10 mins after the time given to you. If you arrive more than 10 mins late, you will be asked to make another appointment. Please do not be offended by this; the reason that we do this is so that other patients are not kept waiting if you are late.
If you need to cancel an appointment, please inform us as soon as you know that you will not be keeping it so that your appointment can be given to another patient and will not be wasted. We have many wasted appointments each day because patients do not turn up and they do not let us know in advance so that the appointment can be given to another patient.