Non-urgent advice: Doctor’s Routinely Scheduled Appointments
These are pre-bookable appointments and can be arranged with reception in person or over the telephone on 0114 239 6687. If you have registered for the service you can also book online via the NHS App or Patient Access.
These appointments can be used to discuss all aspects of health care and plan treatment for simple and complicated medical problems. You may wish to consider trying one of the other types of appointment here for discussing matters with the doctors or nurses.
Sometimes a telephone appointment may allow us to deal with the problem quickly and easily.
PLEASE ensure that you attend your booked appointment or let us know in good time if you cannot. In just one week in 2014, 72 people did not attend their booked appointments, amounting to over 13 hours of clinic time when you or a relative could have been seen.
Non-urgent advice: Nurse Appointments
Our nurses and health care assistants (HCA’s) run a wide variety of appointment options for all sorts of health needs. These range from contraceptive planning, blood pressure monitoring, blood tests (including warfarin and rheumatology or DMARD monitoring), diabetes, asthma and respiratory or COPD reviews. The list is extensive, so please ask at reception if you would like to book in or learn more.
Non-urgent advice: Minor Conditions Clinic
The clinic operates from 10am until 1pm and 2pm until 4pm. The sessions are run by our three nurse practitioners, Bridget, Mel and Sarah.
Your needs will be assessed by our receptionist to see if your condition fits the criteria for the clinic and you will be booked into an appointment slot.
It is essential that you provide the receptionist with as much information about your condition as possible so that we can ensure the best level of care for you.
You will be given an appointment time and asked to arrive a few minutes early so that you can self check in. We will see you as close to your appointment time as possible but please bear in mind that this is a new clinic, so your patience would be appreciated.
Non-urgent advice: Doctor’s Same Day Appointments
If you are unwell and feel that you cannot wait for a routine GP appointment, please tell us. In such circumstances a doctor will call you to make an assessment and agree a plan with you which may include allocating a same day appointment.
Non-urgent advice: Doctor’s Telephone Appointments
Many matters can be simply managed by speaking with a doctor or a nurse over the telephone. Our receptionist may direct you to one of these appointments or feel free to ask for one yourself when calling.
Examples of things that can be dealt with over the phone include simple paperwork matters, such as repeat sick notes or medication reviews for patients who are on 1 or 2 repeat medications and happy with their current treatment, advice about other health care services outside of the Practice.
Making a diagnosis over the telephone isn’t always possible and so you may be directed to one of the other appointment options if a face to face assessment is needed.
If you are not sure that you need to see a doctor, or you just need some advice over the telephone, we are able to offer a telephone surgery appointment each day. This will be with the Duty Doctor and not the Doctor of your choice.
The receptionist will ask for your details, along with your telephone number and the doctor will ring you back at an estimated time that will be given to you.
In addition to the morning telephone surgery, if you are wanting to speak to a particular doctor or nurse, you will be able to have your name entered on to the next suitable telephone surgery list.
Non-urgent advice: Cancelling your appointment
If you are unable to keep an appointment
On average 61 patients do not attend their appointment each week, wasting approximately 6 hours of doctor/nurse consulting time, so if you cannot attend for your appointment, please let the surgery know with as much notice as possible so that it can be offered to someone else.
You can cancel your appointment by either of the following methods:
Phone: 0114 239 6687 Option 2
Fax: 0114 264 2277 (giving your name, address and date of birth stating the time and date of your appointment and if possible a contact number in case we need to call you back)
Text: Reply to you appointment reminder text message with the world CANCEL and your date of birth.
Cancellation of appointments by the Practice
On occasions, and usually due to unexpected illness, it is necessary for us to cancel an appointment at short notice.
In the event of this happening we do make every effort to contact you personally or send text messages, in the event of not being able to we do have a policy, in the interest of confidentiality, not to leave messages with anyone else or on an answer machine.
This could result in you turning up at the medical centre and not being able to see the doctor that you booked with.
For this reason we do ask that you please provide us with a day time telephone contact number and a mobile number of you have one