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Appointments
For non-urgent issues, please follow the guidelines below and choose the right service. An appointment may not be necessary.
This will help us to be more efficient by making an appointment available to you when you need it the most.
Book an Appointment
Changes to Booking an Appointment
From June 24 onwards, our reception teams will be asked to collect structured information when you call. A clinician, usually GP, would then decide how to best address your needs based on information given keeping in mind objectives laid out above. It is not required to call at 8:30am for this to happen.
Pharmacy & Self-Care
Self-Care
Help and support available from many National and Local Organisations
Pharmacy
Pharmacists are qualified healthcare professionals who can offer clinical advice, over the counter medicines and their use, to effectively and safely manage a range of minor health concerns. They can also help you to decide whether you'll need to see a doctor. You don't need an appointment and you won't even be asked to make a purchase. Every pharmacy also has a private consultation area for you to talk about your symptoms in private if you prefer.
Book a Routine Appointment
To book an appointment call the Surgery on 01243 551321 (Yapton) or 01243 583596 (Middleton) from 8:30am.
You can also pre-book for a later date or contact us via eConsult
GP appointments are normally 10 minutes in duration and are designed to deal with one problem only. If you need more time, please ask for a double appointment.
Surgery Times
- Morning: 8:30am - 12:00pm
- Afternoon: 2:30pm - 6:00pm or 6:30pm
To keep Surgeries Running Smoothly, Please:
- Arrive on time. Arriving late disrupts the timetable and inconveniences other patients. You will be expected to reschedule your appointment time if this happens.
- Let us know if you can't keep your appointment. If you no longer require your appointment, please inform the Practice in good time so that we can make the slot available to other sick patients.
- Do not "squeeze" other people into your appointment. This is unreasonable and only serves to inconvenience others.
- Do not save up several problems for one appointment. Please ask for a longer appointment when booking, if you have several problems to speak to the GP about. The Nurse or GP cannot deal comprehensively and safely with more than one problem in a single appointment. You will be asked to re-book an appointment if this happens.
Telephone Appointments and Email
You can request a telephone appointment with your GP, either on the same day if you ring at 8:30am, or you can book in advance with a pre-bookable appointment. Up to 40% of problems presented to the GP can be effectively dealt with on the phone, provided the doctor has access to your medical records. Please use this facility if you don't need to see your doctor in surgery.
A number of Practice staff members will have access to your email - and will forward it for action as appropriate. Please only use this service for routine matters - and not for requesting appointments or repeat medication. Please contact the surgery if you wish to send anything via our secure online form
Clinic Appointments Available
Clinics:
- High blood pressure
- Heart disease, including heart failure
- Asthma and COPD
- HRT
- Contraception
- Diabetes
Treatment Room:
- Dressings
- Leg ulcers
- Ear syringing
- ECG
- Some injections
Phlebotomist:
- Taking blood
- Urine tests
- ECG
- New patient medicals
Women's Health:
- Family planning
- HRT
- Cervical smears
- Well woman checks
Text Message Reminders
We have a texting service which allows you to receive confirmation and reminders about your appointments.
If you wish to register for this messaging service please fill out the consent form.
Please remember to update your contact details with us when you change address, telephone numbers and email address.
Been Off Work?
Travel Vaccinations
Home Visits
Home visits by a GP or our Paramedic Practitioner are reserved strictly for those patients who are genuinely housebound.
Both community nurses and doctors will visit you at home, but GPs may ask you to come to the surgery if a home visit cannot be justified.
Requests for home visits must be made by telephone, no later than 11am. The doctor will normally call between 11:00am and 3:00pm, after morning surgery.
How to make the best use of your Practice (Home Visits)
If you are too ill to come to the surgery, your doctor will visit you at home. This would normally mean you are confined to bed or otherwise physically unable to come to the Practice.
If a visit is required urgently, please make this clear to the receptionist.
The decision on whether a GP visit is appropriate or not rests with the doctor. Community nurses are not employed by the Practice (they work for Sussex Community Trust) and have their own regulations regarding patients who may be genuinely housebound. This may not necessarily be in accordance with the Practice's guidelines.
GP Visit to Care Homes (Nursing Homes and Residential Homes)
All requests from Care Homes for a GP visit must be accompanied by a completed SBAR form and submitted before 10.30AM.
Information provided on the form will help us to triage the visit.
The visiting team comprises the Duty Doctor (this responsibility is rotated amongst all of our regular GPs) and our Paramedic or Paramedic Practitioner. They will a) prioritise each visit and b) allocate it to the most appropriate clinician.
Any delay in sending completed SBAR forms might cause unnecessary delay in getting appropriate help for patients.
Upon the arrival of our clinician, we request that a member of staff (RGN or Senior Carer) who knows the patient well accompanies the clinician to ensure best possible outcome for our patients.
GP Visit is Not Usual
In most of these cases, to visit would not be an appropriate use of a GP's time:
Common symptoms of childhood: fevers, cold, cough, earache, headache, diarrhoea/vomiting and most cases of abdominal pain. These patients are usually well enough to travel by car. It is not usually harmful to take a child with a fever outside. These children may not be fit to travel by bus or to walk, but car transport is available from friends, relatives or taxi firms. It is not a doctor's job to arrange such transport.
Adults with common problems, such as cough, sore throat, influenza, back pain and abdominal pain, are also readily transportable by car to a doctor's premises.
Common problems in the elderly, such as poor mobility, joint pain and general malaise, would also best be treated by consultation at a doctor's premises. The exception to this would be the truly bed-bound patient.
After initial assessment over the telephone, a seriously ill patient may be better helped by attendance at hospital - Examples of such situations are:
- Myocardial Infarction (Heart Attack).
- Severe shortness of breath.
- Severe haemorrhage.
Life Threatening - Go to A&E
Call 999 or go to A&E now if:
- you or someone you know needs immediate help
- you have seriously harmed yourself - for example, by taking a drug overdose
A mental health emergency should be taken as seriously as a medical emergency.
How to Cancel an Appointment
Following recent feedback provided and gratefully received, we are introducing the following change to be used when you wish to cancel your surgery appointment.
If you need to cancel your appointment please text the following details to 07598 115351:
- Name
- Date of appointment
- Time of appointment
- and the word CANCEL.
We will not accept incoming calls to this number and will not make call-backs based on messages received if requested.
We hope that this will improve interaction with the surgery for those of you with mobile phone devices and will free up telephone capacity for those that do not.
Training Practice
The Practice has been reviewed and gained accreditation as an organisation that meets the standards to train younger doctors embarking on a career in general medical practice.
From time to time doctors may wish to make a video recording of their consultations.
This will be used to help doctors how to assess and improve their consultation skills and their ability to talk to patients.
Chaperone Policy
This practice is committed to providing a safe and comfortable environment and strives to achieve good practice at all times.
All patients are entitled to have a chaperone present during any consultation, examination or procedure. Clinicians at this practice will advise patients a chaperone is necessary during any intimate examination; this is to safeguard both the clinician and you, the patient.
Where a chaperone is not available, the clinician will ask you to make an appointment and request the presence of a chaperone at the time of booking.
We use clinical staff or suitably-qualified non-clinical staff as chaperones as they have had the appropriate training and have been subjected to the necessary criminal records checks.
Family and friends are not permitted to act as chaperones as they do not have the knowledge required nor have they had the necessary training.
Should you wish to see the full chaperone policy please ask to speak to the Practice Manager.
If you have any questions, please speak to the reception staff who will direct you to an appropriate member of the team