Please arrive on time for your appointment.

Appointments are given for the named person only, please do not ask for another member of the family to be seen during the same consultation as this will delay the doctor.

When booking, you may express preference for a GP but subject to availability, you may be offered an alternative GP or health professional.

Morning appointments

• The morning appointments are from 8.30 am (8.20 am on Mondays).

• The first three appointments for each doctor are for people who have to arrive early at their place of work. These appointments can be booked up to 3 weeks in advance.

• The morning appointments with the doctors are released two days ahead.

• Monday & Tuesday appointments are released the previous Friday morning as we are not open over the weekend.

• We always have urgent on day appointments for people who genuinely feel they have an urgent medical problem. These appointments will be triaged by a doctor but may not always be with the doctor of your choice.

• If you think a doctor may be able to help you with a problem without you attending the surgery, you may wish to book a Telephone Consultation. The reception staff will give you an approx time for the doctor to telephone you (at present these are only available in the mornings). Please allow a little time each way, as it is not always easy to keep to time in a busy clinic. Please note: not all doctors have telephone appointments.

Afternoon appointments

• The afternoon appointments can be booked two – three weeks ahead. These are better if you are asked to make a follow up appointment. Again we have a small number of worker appointments.

• Please try to avoid Mondays for follow up appointments, as it is our busiest day of the week.

• We have a small number of appointments for urgent on day problems same as the mornings, these will be triaged by a doctor but it may not be with the doctor of your choice.
  All nurses appointments can be booked two - three weeks ahead.

• We have found by having our appointments only running three weeks ahead, we have considerably cut down our non-attenders (people who for some reason fail to attend their appointment) which wastes a great deal of the doctors and nurses valuable time.

Make the most of your consultation time with the Doctor

Health professionals will listen to your views and concerns and answer your questions, but they may have a limited amount of time. To make the most of your time with them, you could try the following:

• Write down any questions you have before you visit or phone

• Ask the most important questions first

• Ask about any terms or jargon you don’t know

• Request a simple explanation if you don’t understand what was said

• Write down the main points quickly afterwards as a reminder

• Phone or visit again if you have any other questions

Cancelling an appointment

Please notify the surgery as soon as possible if you are unable to make an appointment, so that the slot can be offered to someone else.