Appointments

Urgent appointments

To request an urgent appointment for today or tomorrow (Monday to Friday) during opening times:

When you get in touch, we’ll ask what you need help with.

We will use your answers to choose the most suitable doctor, nurse or healthcare professional to help you.

Routine appointments

These can be booked up to one week in advance, sometimes further depending on availability. Please note, during busy periods you may be offered an appointment with an alternative doctor rather than your usual GP. If you have been asked to book a follow-up appointment, please phone the surgery the week before.

To request a routine appointment in advance during opening times:

When you get in touch, we’ll ask what you need help with.

We will use your answers to choose the most suitable doctor, nurse or healthcare professional to help you.

Enhanced access

We offer a small number of routine early morning and evening doctor appointments for patients who find it difficult to attend the surgery within normal opening times. These appointments should be booked in advance. The surgery is closed for all other business during this time.

These sessions are often held between:

  • 7am to 8am on Mondays and Tuesdays
  • 6:30pm to 7:45pm on Tuesdays

Your appointment

However you choose to contact us, we may offer you a consultation:

  • by phone
  • face to face at the surgery
  • on a video call
  • by text or email

Appointments by phone, video call or by text or email can be more flexible and often means you get help sooner.

Improved access appointments

These are additional appointments, which are available to book daily or several days ahead by our reception team. They are for minor illnesses, not on going problems/conditions. They are frequently available here at Stoke Road and also at Cleevelands, Winchcombe, Sixways and Leckhampton Surgeries. Other surgeries may be offered depending on availability.

Practice nurse appointments

These can be booked up to 4 weeks in advance and are used for: cervical smears, pill checks and specialist injections. The practice nurses also run specialist clinics for managing long term conditions. Please visit our clinics and services page for more information.

GP phone appointments

These can be booked up to a maximum of two weeks in advance and can be used if your problem/query can be dealt with over the phone. For example discussing results or medication reviews. We can give you an approximate time when the doctor will phone, so please leave several phone numbers if necessary.

Morning triage – 8:30am to midday

This clinic is run by the morning duty doctor. This is for problems that need immediate treatment on the same day. Housebound patients unable to attend surgery requesting a visit are asked to phone the surgery on 01242 672 007 before 10:30am if possible. Please tell the receptionist the nature of the problem so that the doctor can call you back in order to provide appropriate advice, an appointment or a home visit.

Afternoon triage – midday to 6:30pm

This clinic is run by the afternoon duty doctor. Patients are asked to phone the surgery on 01242 672 007 and ask to be added to the afternoon triage list, if their problem cannot wait until the following morning.

Surgeries running late

Each GP appointment is for 10 minutes. Sometimes the doctor will have to spend longer with a patient for a difficult problem and occasionally the doctor will be called out of surgery for an emergency. In these situations it is inevitable that the surgery will run late and we will let you know if the expected waiting time is more than 30 minutes. Please help us to run on time wherever possible by booking one appointment for one person for one problem. If you need another member of your family to be seen, or have several problems which need to be dealt with, please make separate appointments.

This is also true for our practice nurses. We pre book a number of nurse appointments in every surgery but the nurses also have to deal with problems which arise on the day such as helping with urgent ECGs, assisting doctors or sending patients in to hospital for emergency care.

Cancelling or changing an appointment

To cancel your appointment:

If you need help when we are closed

If you need medical help now, use NHS 111 online or call 111.

NHS 111 online is for people aged 5 and over. Call 111 if you need help for a child under 5.

Call 999 in a medical or mental health emergency. This is when someone is seriously ill or injured and their life is at risk.

If you need help with your appointment

Please tell us:

  • if there’s a specific doctor, nurse or other health professional you would prefer to respond
  • if you would prefer to consult with the doctor or nurse by phone, face-to-face, by video call or by text or email
  • if you need an interpreter
  • if you have any other access or communication needs

Home visits

We do provide a home visiting service for those patients who are too ill or too frail to attend the surgery. If you need a home visit please phone us before 10:30am (except in genuine emergencies) as this helps our doctors to plan their time efficiently. For callers after this time it may not be possible to arrange a visit for that day. Remember that the surgery is set up to assess patients and we have a much greater range of equipment available at the surgery, such as ECG machines, good lighting, resuscitation facilities and so on, than we can provide to patients in their homes. It may be impossible to examine someone properly at home.

Home visit requests after 10:30am are reserved for genuine emergencies only. In the afternoon, there is only one ‘on call’ GP and the time taken for a single home visit could be used to see up to 10am more patients at the surgery. If you request a home visit after midday , it is likely that the duty doctor will phone to assess the urgency of the situation and decide whether the patient should be brought to the surgery where we have the necessary facilities to best deal with the problem.

Home visits are not a way for patients to resolve personal transportation problems. If you are able to get to the shops, or the hairdresser, or to hospital appointments, then you should come to the surgery for your routine appointments.

Home visit guidelines

If you require a home visit please expect that you will be required to give the receptionist some indication of the nature of the problem. This then allows the doctor to assess the urgency. Our receptionists will only add visit requests to a request list; the doctors will decide if your request for a visit is appropriate. If they decide that it is not appropriate for you to be visited at home, you will be notified by phone and informed that you will need to attend the surgery to be seen.

GP visit recommended

Home visiting makes clinical sense and is the best way of giving a medical opinion in cases involving the terminally ill or the truly bed bound patient for whom travel by car would cause a significant deterioration in their medical condition.

GP visit may be useful

Following a conversation with a health professional, it may be agreed that a seriously ill patient will be helped by a GP’s visit.

GP visit is not appropriate

In most of the cases below a visit would not be an appropriate use of your GP’s time or best for the patient:

Heart attack – severe crushing chest pain. In this case it is essential to get the patient to hospital as soon as possible and the correct approach is to call 999 for an ambulance.

Common symptoms of childhood: fevers, cold, cough, earache, headache, diarrhoea/vomiting and most cases of abdominal pain. These patients are usually readily transportable and able to travel to the surgery. It is also likely that they would be assessed and treated more rapidly and effectively by attending the surgery rather than waiting for a doctor to visit. Please note it is not harmful to take a child with fever outside.

Related information

Health A to Z

Sick notes

Test results