Appointments

Online Booking

You can now book doctors appointments on line. In order to use this new, secure booking service you must first register on-line. Please ask one of our receptionists for a letter containing your unique identifiers to allow you to register.

This facility will allow you to make doctor appointments on line and order repeat prescription items authorised by your GP direct from your computer records.

NB Please keep safe all passwords allocated to you. Do not share these with anyone else.

Making an Appointment

Appointments can be made by phone on 01594 845715 or at the reception desk.

Please inform us promptly in the event of a cancellation so that we can allocate the appointment to another patient.

Whilst we try to run to time, our philosophy is that patients will be given the time they need regardless of whether the doctor is running late.

If you are late for an appointment the doctor will almost always be able to see you, but again you may have to wait.

Appointments may also be booked for the practice nurses and midwife.

Practice Nurse Appointments

Our Practice Nurses are qualified nurses who have taken additional training in various fields of medicine to help the practice deliver a high standard of care to our patients.  Our two nurses are both equally skilled for most of their job roles, but each has specialised in additional fields (Jane in diabetes and Lorna in respiratory).  The nurses are taking on more and more of the care previously and traditionally carried out by doctors.  Their roles are therefore expanding and their appointments ever more precious.

In order to free up the qualified nurses to take on this skilled work, we have employed and trained staff in phlebotomy (blood taking), including monitoring of patients on warfarin (with supervision from the Clinical staff) and ECG recording.  When booking appointments for these things, our reception staff will make the appointments with Diane or Anne except in urgent very unusual circumstances.

Telephoning the Practice

Like all businesses, we find our telephone lines are busier at some times than others. The following information may help you when contacting us by telephone

Our lines are busiest between 08:30 and 09:30 each morning and between 14:00 and 14:30 each afternoon. We have a skeleton staff working after 17:00 and so close our routine appointment booking line down from 17:00 -18:30.

Private Appointments

Limited private appointments are available only for patients who are not registered with the doctors of the practice for NHS care.

Automated Check In

We have a wall mounted self check-in facility.

This very easy to use touch screen device has been wall mounted in our waiting room. Patients can use this to record their arrival for any appointment.

Patients are prompted to enter their month, then day of birth. Then they are asked to confirm their appointment.

Please be assured, your details cannot be viewed by others.

We hope that this will reduce queue lengths at our reception desk and allow our reception staff to continue with admin work away from the front desk.

Please be assured, our reception staff will be available to help you if necessary. Do ring the bell on the reception desk if you cannot attract their attention.

Please note that NHS funds were not used to purchase or install this piece of equipment and it does not threaten the jobs of our reception staff.

Home Visits

If possible please try to telephone reception before 10:00 if you require a home visit.

A doctor or nurse may phone you back as it may be that your problem can be dealt with by telephone advice, or that it would be more appropriate to send a nurse, or indeed arrange a hospital attendance.

House visits are only available for patients who are housebound because of illness or disability.

Please remember that several patients can be seen in the practice in the time that it takes to make one home visit. There are also better facilities for examining and treating patients at the surgery.

Telephone Consultations

If you need to speak to a Doctor

Please phone 01594 845715  to make an appointment for a telephone consultation. The doctors now have a list to call patients between 12:00 and 12:30 to discuss matters that can be resolved over the phone.

If you need to speak to a Practice Nurse

Please phone 01594 845715 between 12:15 and 12:45 if you need to speak to a nurse Monday to Friday (excluding bank holidays).

Our Appointment System

A little information about how our appointment system is set up...

We have two full time General Practitioner (GP) partners at this practice.

In addition to seeing patients at the surgery, our doctors have to fit in the following work

• Home visits
• Medical reports
• Patient referral letters
• Dealing with correspondence regarding patients
• Processing and checking repeat prescription requests
• Audit work
• Continuing education and update
• Negotiation and correspondence with the Primary Care Trust
• Monitoring of performance against Department of Health Targets
• Appraisals
• General administration of practice business
• Etc

Our GPs are also involved in the following activities outside practice time

• Out of Hours shifts
• Medical politics
• Meetings
• Continuous professional learning
• Private medical work at patients’ request, e.g. medical examinations, medical reports, certification.

As you will appreciate, the doctors’ time needs to be carefully managed in order to fit everything into their schedule.

We try to offer a range of appointment times and modes of access to GP advice, to cater for the great majority of our patients.  However, sometimes the demand for appointments does outstrip availability. Our doctors have set their holiday entitlement within the partnership to maximise time available for patients and the above work, while ensuring they get rest away from the practice to achieve a safe work-life balance.  We make use of locum doctors to cover gaps in appointment provision where financially possible.

Our practice nurses are a great resource to us and an appointment with one of them is often an appropriate alternative to a GP. Our reception staff are able to guide patients in deciding if this might be appropriate if given some idea of the issue.  (We understand however, that you may not wish to divulge information to a receptionist and fully respect this.)

We find that as a general rule patient demand for appointments is greater on a Monday, Tuesday and Friday.  We have therefore set up our appointment system to reflect this in order to cope with “on the day” requests and urgent/emergency appointment requests.  We also state that if a patient feels they need to be urgently seen, we do our very best to accommodate them. In order to get the best from our appointment system, we need to monitor the number of wasted appointments.  We request that patients do their best to let us know as early as possible when they cannot attend a booked appointment so that it can be offered to somebody else.

We try to make it as easy as possible for patients to contact the surgery to make appointments.  We have introduced an on-line appointment booking facility.  Patients wishing to use this facility should ask our reception staff for the necessary passwords needed to register via our website. 

Where patients feel a query can be addressed by talking to a doctor by telephone, this can be arranged with one of our receptionists.

We are grateful that in most cases our patients are understanding of the above and request appointments only where necessary.  We thank you for working with us to make the most of the available appointments.

Practice Nurse Appointments

Our Practice Nurses are qualified nurses who have taken additional training in various fields of medicine to help the practice deliver a high standard of care to our patients.  Our two nurses are both equally skilled for most of their job roles, but each has specialised in additional fields (Jane in diabetes and Lorna in respiratory).  The nurses are taking on more and more of the care previously and traditionally carried out by doctors.  Their roles are therefore expanding and their appointments ever more precious.

In order to free up the qualified nurses to take on this skilled work, we have employed and trained staff in phlebotomy (blood taking), including monitoring of patients on warfarin (with supervision from the Clinical staff) and ECG recording.  When booking appointments for these things, our reception staff will make the appointments with our phlebotomist except in urgent very unusual circumstances.

Letters and/or Results

If you are asked to make an appointment with your GP to discuss test results or hospital clinic letter, please telephone the surgery to check that the information has been received before attending for your appointment.  In some cases it may be possible to discuss results with your GP on the phone.

What’s Available?

The Surgery      

For Appointments, Home visits, Results, Prescriptions and other queries.

                Our lines are open 08:30 to 13:00 and 14:00 to 18:30

                If you call at other times you will be advised of the available options

999 (24 hours):

For a life threatening emergency call 999 at any time.

111 (24 hours):

This is a new number currently available in Gloucestershire

Call 111 if:

you need medical help fast but it's not a 999 emergency

you think you need to go to A&E or need another NHS urgent care service

you don't know who to call or you don't have a GP to call

you need health information or reassurance about what to do next

NHS Direct (24 hours): (0845 4647) for health advice on the phone.

Lydney (or Dilke) Minor Injuries: (08:00-23:00)         

Go in direct if you have any injury, especially if you feel you might need an

x-ray.

Emergency Department (24 hours)

                If you have a serious injury or you need attention and Lydney is shut.

Please note:

There is always a GP service available 24 hours a day. If we are shut then there are

Out of Hours GPs available in the Dilke, Lydney (there are limited hours) or to visit. They need to be accessed through 111 at the present time. Currently in the Forest of Dean the majority of the doctors working in the Out of Hours are also local GPs (Including Dr Lench and Dr Hamilton at times).

If you wish to see a GP out of hours then call 111, do not turn up at the centre as there is no walk in service and usually this will mean you wait longer than if you’d called.

Most illness can be treated without attending Gloucester or calling 999. The new 111 system should make it easier to avoid travelling to Gloucester by providing a means to contact GPs/ambulances using a single number.

The Minor Injury Units in the Forest can deal with many injuries and may well save you several hours wait in an emergency department.