APPOINTMENTS

We offer a range of different appointments to cater for all of our patients. When you call the surgery to make an appointment, our receptionists will ask you to give them a brief outline of the reason for your appointment in order to enable them to direct you to the most appropriate clinician, as outlined in our signposting information leaflet for patients. We greatly appreciate your help with this and ask for your continued support to enable the most efficient use of our resources.

For most acute and minor illnesses, you DO NOT need to see a doctor. Our highly trained Nurse Practitioners and Pharmacists can treat a whole range of symptoms including:

• Joint and back problems
• Skin problems including rashes, eczema, moles, lesions
• Abdominal pain, constipation, heartburn
• Eye problems including conjunctivitis, itchy eyes, eye pain
• Respiratory problems including flu, cough/wheeze, laryngitis, pleuritic pain
• ENT problems including tonsillitis, earache, sinusitis, hay fever, allergies, swollen glands
• Female health – cystitis/urine infection, vaginal discharge, menstrual problems, contraception.

We greatly appreciate your help with this and ask for your continued support to enable the most efficient use of our resources. This way we will be able to provide you with the best, most flexible and most timely service.

Obviously we do understand that very occasionally something is felt to be very personal and we will respect your decision not to give the receptionist details on those occasions. We do ask, however, that this is the exception rather than the norm.

You can book an appointment by calling the surgery on 01995 607399, via Patient Access or the myGP app.

Doctorlink

We are now using Doctorlink, which enables you to check your symptoms online and be signposted to an appropriate healthcare appointment. If you require an appointment at the practice, Doctorlink will send this information to us and we will contact you to arrange.

For more information and to register please visit: https://app.doctorlink.com/garstang/register

If you have any problems with registering for this service, please contact the Doctorlink support service on 0330 111 6433 or via helpdesk@doctorlink.com.

Please note, this is an additional service. Patients can still contact the surgery via telephone to discuss symptoms and arrange appointments.

TYPES OF APPOINTMENTS

We have recently changed our appointment system to re-introduce pre-bookable, timed, GP appointments.

We are currently offering three different types of GP appointments:

New Telephone Consultation:  This is for any new problem that you may have, or a problem you have had previously, but not in the past 6 months.  These are available to book within 1-3 days.  These are timed appointments i.e. you will be given an appointment time with the expectation of the call being within 30 minutes of that time.

Follow Up Telephone Consultation: This is for any problem you have already had a consultation for within the last 6 months. These are available to book within 3 days to a week. These are timed appointments as above.

Urgent/Acute Telephone Consultation:  These are for more urgent types of problems that you feel cannot wait 24 hours.  These are not timed appointments. The doctor who is on duty for urgent problems will ring you back either that morning or afternoon.

ALL GP face to face appointments remain at the discretion of the doctor. 

Although lock down restrictions will be lifting over the coming months, we need to continue to ensure we provide a COVID safe environment for patients and staff and this means continuing with COVID control measures within the surgery.  Screens remain in the waiting areas and the number of patients who can wait at any one time continues to be restricted. Please be assured that  a face to face consultation will be arranged if the doctor decides this is necessary. You need to continue to wear a face mask if you are asked to come to the surgery.

We continue to offer a full range of nursing services.  We have been very fortunate to have been able to do this throughout the COVID vaccination campaign thanks to our dedicated team of volunteers to whom we continue to be extremely grateful.

Cancelling Appointments

If you no longer require your appointment, we respectfully request that you cancel it as far in advance as possible so the appointment can be provided to another patient. You can cancel your appointments via Patient Access or the myGP app, by responding 'cancel' to a text reminder, or by calling reception on 01995 607399.