GP Appointments

How to book an appointment with your doctor

Telephone consultations

Book by:

  • Phoning our receptionist (01903247740)
  • Using your preferred App (such as the NHS App)
  • Walking into the surgery (ideally reserved for those who struggle with the above)

These can be booked in advance or on the day by your preference. We usually have capacity to call back the same day, and always reserve some appointments for on the day, but sometimes the next routine appointment is up to 2-3 working days later.

Econsultations

These can be initiated by you 24/7 365 days per year

Econsultations allow you to fill our structured forms and freetext information to describe your problem. They are passed to your doctor, who will reply within 2 working days. Your doctor might reply by email, text or phone and for straight-forward queries where enough information is provided might result in an answer / prescription. For more complex queries you might be asked to book a telephone or face to face consultation.

Face to Face consultations

Please call reception (01903247740) to book these.

  • If you have been invited to do so by your doctor / the surgery.
  • If you are unable to consult via telephone or econsultation.

It’s often useful to give the receptionist a brief description of your query as this might result in the doctor requesting your initial consultation is changed to face to face. Don’t worry if you want a face to face consultation but book a telephone consultation. From that phone call, your doctor is able to organise a face to face consultation and typically the same day.

If you struggle with computers and can’t hear / don’t manage with the phone you must be able to contact us easily to organise a face to face appointment. Please in cases like this make us aware of your needs. Please ask to speak with the practice manager if you have difficulty booking your appointment.

Text Consultations

Your GP or other surgery staff may initiate a text consultation with you. This might be in response to a query you have sent, for example a non-repeat medication request. Or it might be to ask for some information like your weight, height or to ask questions about how your asthma is controlled. The surgery also regularly uses text consultations to gather your home blood pressure readings and issue advice in return. You may also find your doctor asks during a phone consultation if you’d like to send a photo of your problem (e.g. a skin rash) to assist in formulating a diagnosis, by means of a link sent by text message.

Video Consultations

There are available on request. The GP needs to provide you with some instructions to connect your video call and therefore we ask you book a telephone consultation, which can be ‘converted’ by the GP into a video consultation on request. Please do let the receptionist know in advance if you know you would like to do this.

Home visits

Requests for home visits should be made as early in the day as possible, usually before 10.30am. The doctor will decide if a home visit is appropriate or whether it would be better for you to attend the surgery, where there are more suitable facilities and equipment.

Home visits are very time consuming and the doctor may telephone back to discuss requests for a visit. Lack of transport is not a valid reason for a home visit and sick children should almost always be brought to the surgery.

Urgent Appointments (when we are full on the day)

Cornerways has an ethos of trying to meet all requests for appointments on the day. However, sometimes we have unpredictable surges in demand and all appointments are full (typically 50 appointments per doctor in a normal working day to become full). In such scenarios, we ask the reception team to triage your appointment request by asking the following

“The next routine appointment is on xxx. You can be called urgently today if waiting might be unsafe, you are in pain or very worried.”

If you answer that you do require an urgent appointment on the day, you will be given one, regardless of how busy we are. Please remember we are a small surgery providing a personal service and can’t spread demand out between colleagues, and in this regard it’s extremely useful to reserve use of urgent appointments for when required.

Medical Emergencies

We don’t advise attending the surgery for concern about medical emergencies where A&E are best equipped to help. However, if you do attend the surgery concerned you are experiencing a medical emergency and it is unsafe for you to leave without seeing a doctor – please clearly inform them of your concern and they will ask you to sit down whilst they find a doctor to assess the best course of action.

How not to organise a consultation

  • Please don’t email us to request a consultation because your email may get lost in hundreds of others. It is not reliable so is not safe.
  • Please don’t use comments on online medication requests to request a consultation or provide any information other than a comment on a medication. It is not reliable so is not safe.
  • Please don’t ask for either an urgent or emergency consultation if one is not required. If in doubt – ask us – we are here to help.

Please remember

  • On Tuesday afternoons the surgery is closed from 12pm.
  • The receptionists are not trained to tell you whether to attend an emergency surgery or book a routine surgery appointment. However the doctor will inform you if the correct appointment has been attended.