Appointments

This is a group practice and patients are free to book routine appointments with the doctor of their choice. It does not matter if your medical card shows that you are registered under a different doctor.  Some of the doctors do not work full time and there may therefore be a wait for appointments with these particular doctors.

Booking Routine Appointments

If you ring the Medical Centre from 08.30 hours, you should be offered an appointment for the next working day.  This minimises the number of appointments lost due to patients who pre-book and forget to attend.  If your preferred GP is fully booked, you will be offered an appointment with another GP.  Our appointments are 10 minutes long.  Although we try hard to run our surgeries on time, please be patient if we are running late.  Any delay is likely to be due to the doctor dealing with a particularly complex or serious condition, which is always impossible to anticipate.

For Diabetic Clinic appointments please ask to speak to Barbara or Tracey. 

For travel advice, please give details to one of our receptionists and they will ask a nurse to call you back.

Pre-Booked Appointments

There are a small number of appointments available that can be booked up to one week in advance.  If all of these have been booked and you still require a non-urgent appointment, a receptionist will take your name and telephone number and then contact you when an appointment becomes available.  If you have not heard from us within one week, please contact the surgery.

Urgent Consultations

If you feel you need to be seen urgently please do telephone before you come to the Medical Centre.  Your name will be put on a Triage list and the duty Doctor will call you back to discuss your problem and offer you an appointment if necessary.   Under these circumstances the doctor you will see will be the doctor with the next available appointment on that day.

Please ensure you give the receptionists as much information as you can and a correct contact telephone number to help the doctor call back and speak to you.

If you need an urgent visit, the receptionist will contact the duty-doctor straight away and you will be contacted and visited as appropriate.

In an emergency, for example severe chest pain, severe breathing problems, unconsciousness or accident dial 999 and ask for an ambulance.

Telephone Advice

The doctors are happy to deal with queries that do not need a face-to-face consultation over the phone.  Please ask the receptionist to leave a message for the doctor to call you.  It will not be possible for the receptionist to tell you what time the doctor will call you as this will depend on the level of demand on that particular day.  If you have a mobile number, you can leave that as a contact number.

Home Visits

Home visits can only be made to those who genuinely cannot come to the Medical Centre either due to severe illness or for those who are housebound.

All children should be seen at the Medical Centre.  Facilities for diagnosis and treatment are far better at the Centre than they are at home and you can often be seen here more quickly.  In fact, five patients can be seen at the surgery in the time it takes to see one patient on a home visit.

Please call before 10 am where possible.

Medical Cover Outside of Normal Hours

Normal working hours are 9.00am to 6.30pm.

For any medical queries at any time, try ringing NHS Direct on 0845 4647 as their specialist nurses can often help.

Please do not make routine calls to the doctor between 6pm and 8.30am. 

If you do need to speak to a doctor out of normal hours, either telephone the Medical Centre on 01553 810253 - this will give you the telephone number of Anglian Medical Care which provides medical cover for urgent or serious illness outside of normal hours - or contact Anglian Medical direct on 01603 488488.  The assistant will take your details and relay them to a doctor who will assess whether your query can be dealt with over the phone or by being seen by a specialist nurse, paramedic or doctor.  You may be asked to attend the Out Of Hours Centre, based at the Queen Elizabeth Hospital, King's Lynn.