Late running of Doctors surgeries

• Please remember to arrive ON TIME for your appointment. If the first person in a surgery arrives ten minutes late for their appointment, this means that the entire surgery will then be running ten minutes late. The Doctor sits around waiting for ten minutes at the start and then every other patient after the late arrival has to wait as well.
• One appointment is for one person. Each of our appointments is for one patient. Please do not ask the Doctor to see your children, wife, husband etc in your appointment as this will mean that every patient the Doctor sees later in the surgery will be kept waiting beyond their appointment time. We are happy to see several patients at the same time but only if they are each given an appointment. If you and your child both want to be seen please book an appointment each.
• If you have several problems you wish to discuss with the Doctor, the Doctor may deal with the main problem or two and ask you to book another appointment to deal with the rest. Our appointments are usually scheduled for about ten minutes and there may not be enough time to deal with a large number of problems in one appointment.
• Please remember to order your repeat prescription in good time. We normally need at least two working days to process repeat prescription requests. Patients coming in for routine repeat prescriptions that have become `urgent` because they have run out mean interruptions to the surgeries of the Doctors causing delays for all the other patients.

Difficulty getting an appointment at the time you request

• Please, if you realise you will not be needing an appointment telephone us to let us know that you do not need it. Usually we `lose` about 20 appointments a week because people book them but do not turn up. By not cancelling your appointment you are stopping someone else from seeing the Doctor.
• We offer an emergency same day appointment system for those with medically urgent problems. These emergency appointments are for medically urgent problems only, not for sick notes to be backdated for the last month for the broken leg that you had 5 weeks ago. By taking up one of our emergency appointments with a non urgent problem you could be putting someone else`s life at risk.
• See your local pharmacist if you have a minor illness like a cough cold or the `flu`. About a quarter of our appointments are filled up with people who have coughs and colds we cannot cure. Antibiotics have no effect on colds or the `flu` and you do not need a sick note unless you have been off work more than seven days. Pay a visit to the chemist and get your pharmacist to advise you on the best treatment for your cold.
• If you are retired or out of work, please try to use our late morning or afternoon appointments so our early morning and evening appointments can be used by those at work in the day.

Seeing the Doctor in an emergency

• We offer same day appointments for medical emergencies. It is important they are only used for emergencies (see above) otherwise urgent cases may be delayed. Please only ask for an urgent or emergency appointment if you really need it. You could be taking up an appointment that could be used to save someone else`s life.
• Visits are carried out to those who cannot attend the surgery. Visits are not generally appropriate for children, who are usually best seen in the surgery where they will be able to be seen faster and with more equipment available. Bringing a child out of doors who has a fever will not generally be harmful and indeed, will often help bring a temperature down. If you think you may need a visit, please ring as early in the day as you can, a Doctor will probably telephone you to discuss things first.
• Any of our patients can ask for the Doctor to telephone them back about a problem they are worried about. This may save an appointment for someone who needs it more. If you are ringing to speak to a Doctor, the Doctor will usaully ring you back so as not to interrupt his surgery. Please ring as early in the day as possible and PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE leave a `real` phone number not a mobile for the Doctor to ring. Mobile phones are very unreliable and on average one in three callers leaving mobile numbers will be found to be uncontactable when the number is called.