Appointments

Cancelling your appointment

Please call us if you are unable to keep your appointment. It means that we can offer your appointment to another patient. Call us on 0118 972 2188 or email schcreception@nhs.net.  If you booked via the NHS App you can cancel your appointment using this.

Book your appointment 

All routine: doctor, pharmacist medication review, and blood test appointments are able to be booked via The NHS app or through the Patient Access app.

You can also book your next appointment by contacting our reception team on 0118 972 2188.

Because of booking constraints, specialist clinics and treatment room appointments, can only be booked through calling reception.

Routine doctor appointments  

Telephone or Face to Face appointments for 10-15 mins each appointment.

We aim to offer routine appointments with our doctors within 10 days.  This time frame may be longer if you want an appointment with a particular doctor due to individual doctor availability.  Please call to book with our reception team 0118 972 2188.

Please note, for telephone appointments, a doctor will phone you; please be available up to an hour after the scheduled time.

“Usual Doctor”

We believe that patients get better care by having a regular GP who knows their background.

• All patients are allocated a usual doctor, to try to get continuity.
• We encourage you to see the same doctor, about the same problem, when possible.
• You are free to choose to see any GP about any problem, and we may indeed suggest seeing certain members of the team who may have a special interest.
• Given workload pressures, we use a duty doctor rota to provide urgent cover.  Depending on the urgency and type of problem, you may be directed to another member of the team, in order to get continuity.
• No GP works 5 days a week any more in clinic. We also have lots of training and governance demands on time.  To cover this and leave, we use a buddy system to ensure that all results/letters/requests are processed in a timely way.

Urgent appointments

Urgent appointments are available on the day.  If your problem is urgent, a doctor (not necessarily your own doctor) will call you back as soon as possible. Please note however, if you telephone after 4.30pm and it is not medically urgent, the doctor may not be able to return your call on the same day.

These appointments must be medically urgent for that day.  These appointments are offered in order – by the next urgent appointment that is available. Unfortunately by the very nature of these appointments we cannot offer a choice of time. Please call to book with our reception team 0118 972 2188.

Home visits

If you, or a relative, are too ill to travel to the health centre or have a disability and you would like a home visit please call 0118 972 2188 before 10am, if possible.

A doctor or nurse may phone you back as it may be that your problem can be dealt with by telephone advice or indeed arrange a hospital attendance. Please note that home visits are only available for patients who are housebound because of illness or disability.

Clinical Pharmacist appointments

Telephone or Face to Face Appointments

Our Clinical Pharmacists are involved in the following duties and work closely with our GPs and nurses:

• Repeat prescription reauthorisations
• Medication and prescription queries from patients
• Chemist queries
• Acute or past medication requests
• Annual medication reviews, including blood test requests and blood pressure checks
• Hospital letters – discharge or clinic letters where medications have been stopped, withheld, altered, started
• Requests for NOMAD packs
• Contraceptive pill reviews
• HRT medication reviews
• Anti-depressant medication reviews
• Pain medication reviews

Blood test appointments

Are available every morning.  Please call our reception team to book 0118 972 2188.

We also have Saturday morning blood appointments every other week at Townlands Hospital.

Please note one of the team must have requested the test, or you must have a form provided by the hospital.  We cannot perform tests at patient request.

econsult – Online Consultation Service 

This online service is great for administrative requests, as it will prompt you for most of the information we will need, for us to help you.

Text Message Reminders

We have a text message system which will send reminders for clinical appointments by text.  If your patient record contains your mobile number you will receive a notification when you make your appointment followed by a reminder 48 hours before the appointment.