Appointments

Information:

In order to ensure that our resources are used safely and effectively all requests to be seen by a GP are taken as a message by the reception team. The reception team will ask for information about the reason for the appointment that day and may signpost patients to another service such as nurse practitioner, optician, dentist or community pharmacist. Alternatively, the reception team may advise patients of specific protocols/ procedures that the practice has for specific problems or queries.

We will deal with routine requests made on the day via telephone or face-to-face until all appointments are allocated for that day. This is to ensure that we continue to work safely. Requests made after this time will be advised to call the next working day. The requests to be seen are viewed by the GPs through the course of the working day, prioritising medical problems over administrative queries. Patients are either allocated an appointment for a face-to-face review, receive a telephone call to discuss the problem in more detail or are directed to the most appropriate person to deal with the query or problem.

Urgent medical problems will be dealt with on the day including children under 16 years.

We can also prebook test result follow up appointments if the GP has requested this. These appointments can be booked through the reception team. You can also prebook routine Mental Health appointments through our website or via the reception team. Please see our website for further details.

If a receptionist is in anyway concerned about a patient who may be seriously unwell, that receptionist will inform the duty GP of their concerns immediately, to enable the GP to prioritise clinical triage.