Appointments

The Practice offers a very wide range of appointments and has a number of doctors for you to see. Every effort is made to see emergency cases the same day and for routine appointments to be available at the earliest possible time.

Sometimes you will not be able to see the doctor of your choice at the time you want if the doctor is away or already fully booked. On these occasions you are welcome to make an appointment with another doctor.

Demand for appointments always exceeds supply and we have developed our telephone access and appointments systems to improve services and meet our access targets set by the Department of Health.

Urgent appointments

To request an urgent appointment for today (Monday to Friday) during opening times:

When you get in touch, we’ll ask what you need help with.

We will use your answers to choose the most suitable doctor, nurse or healthcare professional to help you.

Routine appointments

To request a routine appointment in advance during opening times:

When you get in touch, we’ll ask what you need help with.

We will use your answers to choose the most suitable doctor, nurse or healthcare professional to help you.

Get medical advice from a nurse

To ask a non-urgent medical question:

We will respond within 2 working days during opening times.

Our appointment system

The appointment types that we have are:

Urgent appointments

For patients who need to be assessed or seen the same day. Patients will be seen or contacted by our on call triage team.

When you telephone the surgery, and you require urgent treatment, we will offer you a triage appointment where a duty on call clinician will telephone you at home and discuss your symptoms with you. From this discussion the clinician may be able to help you by issuing medication for you to collect at a local chemist or they may decide you should be seen for a face to face consultation.

Please note that we do not offer a walk in service for urgent treatment. This is because we cannot guarantee a time that you will be seen by our on call GP as they may be making an emergency home visit or dealing with urgent patients already on our triage list.

We also have a duty of care to our patients in the waiting room; it may be that you have an infectious/contagious disease and we must follow set guidelines to quarantine patients, so please stay at home and call us for advice.

Routine appointments

Suitable for those patients with non urgent needs or those requiring ongoing treatment. These appointments are available to book up to four weeks in advance either by using our online services or by calling into the surgery.

If you do not require an urgent, same day appointment, we would be grateful if you therefore do not phone or call into the surgery until after 12:30pm. This will enable urgent appointment requests only to be dealt with in the morning, and therefore spread demand on our telephone system more evenly throughout the day which should, in turn, hopefully reduce the waiting time for phone calls to be answered during peak periods.

Same day appointments

We do not offer routine appointments on the same day, these are held for urgent/emergency bookings.

If you feel you need to be seen the same day please speak to reception, you will be asked for brief details about your symptoms (please note all practice staff are bound by patient confidentiality).

You may be offered a telephone triage in the first instance and the doctor or nurse practitioner will call you and possibly ask you to come to the surgery. For very severe symptoms we would offer you an emergency appointment straight away.

Alternatively, you may be asked to come to the surgery and sit and wait for the duty doctor. Please note urgent/emergency appointments are offered for the time frame that you call in. E.g. if you call in the morning we are unable to offer you an urgent appointment in the afternoon.

Speak to a doctor

You can speak to a doctor as an emergency triage as detailed above or a planned telephone consultation.

Booked telephone consultations

Sometimes you may want to speak to your doctor, but not necessarily see them. You can book an appointment for your doctor to ring you during normal surgery hours if you wish. The doctor will have your records in front of them, and it saves you having to come in to the surgery. It may mean that you don’t have to take time off work to visit the surgery.

Nurse or healthcare assistant appointments

Our team of nurses and healthcare assistants have many different types of appointments. To arrange an appointment you need to speak to the Reception Team who will know how long each appointment will take and can book the correct amount of time for you.

Improved access service

To find out more about our improved access service, please visit our improved access service page.

Cancelling or changing an appointment

To cancel your appointment:

  • phone us on 01452 529933 during opening times or call our Appointment Cancellation Line 01452 505879, available 24 hours a day
  • respond to a text reminder

If you need help when we are closed

If you need medical help now, use NHS 111 online or call 111.

NHS 111 online is for people aged 5 and over. Call 111 if you need help for a child under 5.

Call 999 in a medical or mental health emergency. This is when someone is seriously ill or injured and their life is at risk.

Home visits

Patients are generally seen at the surgery, but between the hours of 8am and 6:30pm patients may be seen at home if a home visit is considered necessary because of the patient’s medical condition. A doctor will ring you before a visit to establish the urgency of your visit.

Please call the surgery before 10:30am to request a home visit if at all possible, in order to help in the planning of the visits after morning surgery.

Related information

Health A to Z

Sick notes

Test results