Accessing our services

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General Practice is not an emergency service. Please call 999 or attend your nearest emergency department if you have chest pain, altered consciousness, severe difficulty breathing, signs of a stroke or serious bleeding.

Our reception team are trained to identify common medical emergencies and may advise you to attend the emergency department rather than seek an appointment in General Practice.

From May 2023, there has been an imposed change to the contract for primary care services in England. This requires that we must take steps to to ensure that any patient who contacts us is provided with an appropriate response.

These appropriate responses are set in law and are to offer an appointment (at a time that is appropriate and reasonable having regard to all the circumstances), provide appropriate advice or care by another method, signpost to an appropriate service, request further information (for example by requesting the completion of an e-consultation) or inform the patient they will receive more information about the service(s) that may be provided to them.

There is no requirement for an appointment to be offered if one of the other responses would be more appropriate. We may be required to signpost people to an alternative service when this would be safer than exceeding the safe capacity within the practice.

Our reception and care navigation team will need to ask some questions about your care needs or condition in order to offer you the most appropriate response. As a result of this change we have been forced to turn off direct online booking for ANP and GP appointments. Your help and support in working with our team is most appreciated.

All of our appointments can be requested in person at reception, by telephone, via the NHS App and by submitting an e-consultation – e-consultations are a great way to avoid spending time in a queue.

If you no longer need your appointment please let us know using the NHS App or by calling us so that someone else can use the appointment.

We offer a number of on the day and next day appointments for urgent health care concerns. These include acute illnesses and sudden changes in long term health conditions that can not safely wait until your usual clinician is next available.

These can be booked at reception, by calling 0115 927 9119 or by filling in an e-consultation.
Our reception team will recommend the best route for meeting your urgent care needs – this could be referring you to a community pharmacist, booking an appointment directly with a physiotherapist, arranging a home visit from the urgent community response service or booking an urgent appointment with one of our clinicians.

Occasionally, they may advise that you attend the local urgent care centre (which can x-ray suspected broken bones, and are able to prescribe medications for acute illnesses and infections).

Not everyone requires a same day appointment. For patients with ongoing health concerns it is often more appropriate that they see the same clinician each time, this has been proven to improve the quality and safety of the care provided.

Routine and long term health condition appointments can be accessed via our e-consultation service, by telephone and in person at our reception desk.

Depending on your needs, we may ask that you provide additional information using a secure online form or e-consultation to enable one of our clinicians to provide informed recommendations to you, but don’t worry, not being able to use online services will not prevent you getting the care that you need.

If you need an appointment (face to face or by phone) and we do not have a suitable appointment available at the time, we will arrange for a member of our team to contact you, usually within one week, to offer a suitable appointment.

Our highly skilled practice nurses and health care assistants offer a range of appointments for patients with long term health conditions.

We will usually contact you when these reviews are due; alternatively, these appointments can be booked in the usual ways below.

Our reception team are able to arrange appointments with our local extended access scheme. These appointments are provided at our surgery, by our clinicians, on Tuesday mornings and one Saturday a month. At other times, these appointments are provided by our Primary Care Network and the Nottingham City GP Alliance.

Home visits significantly reduce our capacity to undertake appointments in practice and therefore will only be provided where there is a genuine need for housebound patients, as assessed by one of our clinical team.

If you need a home visit, please phone before 10am and be prepared to answer a few questions about the problem to help the doctor or advanced nurse practitioner assess the urgency of the visit. You will then be added to a triage list and contacted directly by a member of the clinical team, as we often find that most matters can be safely dealt with by phone.

We define housebound as meaning A person is deemed to be housebound when they are unable to leave their home environment through physical / psychological illness, this can be a temporary or permanent position. An individual will not be eligible for a home visit if they are able to leave their home environment (i.e. for shopping and medical appointments) on their own, or with assistance from their household or support bubble members and/or carers.

Non-urgent advice: Getting the right care first time

Not all health conditions need to be managed by a doctor or other member of the General Practice team, some conditions are best managed by community pharmacists, physiotherapists and other community based services. Our highly skilled reception team will help to ensure you are directed to the right source of care when you contact us by phone, e-consultation or in person at reception.