Appointments
There are doctor and nurse surgeries throughout the day. Each 10 minute appointment is for one person and one problem only. If your problem is urgent we will always aim to see you promptly. Alternatively we may offer a same day urgent triage telephone call to begin with, where a GP will call you back and discuss your issue via telephone before deciding if an appointment is necessary.
If you need a routine appointment we have online pre-bookable telephone appointments available or you can contact the surgery to book a routine face to face appointment.
We run telephone surgeries to advise on the phone and on busy days to screen all requests for appointments so that all patients will be seen on that day if need be. When we are running a telephone surgery the receptionist will ask for a contact number and the doctor or nurse will ring back as soon as possible. Please let the receptionist know if there is a problem with this.
We will always try to arrange an appointment with a clinician of your choice. Our doctors and nurses all work part-time at this surgery and they need to attend training and up-dating courses or may be on holiday. It may mean that your preferred doctor or nurse has no free appointments when you are wanting to be seen. There are usually free appointments with other members of our team. If you ring and we cannot find you a suitable appointment one of the doctors or nurses will contact you to discuss your problems.
Surgeries may run late due to difficult problems or urgent calls or if an ill patient needs seeing ahead of their booked time. Late arriving patients will need to wait until the end of surgery to be seen.
Practice Nurse/Healthcare Assistant/Pharmacist/Physiotherapist
In a number of cases it might be worth considering an appointment with a practice nurse, pharmacist, physio therapist, or our health care assistant rather than a doctor. All these clinicians are qualified to deal with many ailments and you may be seen more quickly, our reception staff will ask you a series of questions in order to offer you the best service possible to meet your needs.
DNA FIGURES AUGUST 2024
| Appointments Missed | | |
| Drs | 37 | |
| Nurses | 28 | |
| HCA | 9 | |
| Physio | 6 | |
| Total | 80 | |
| | |
| | Hours Missed | Mins Missed |
| Drs | 7.1 | 450 |
| Nurses | 8.8 | 530 |
| HCA | 1.8 | 110 |
| Physio | 1.5 | 90 |
| Total | 19.2 | 1,180 |
Home Visits
Please remember in this busy time that home visits must be requested before 11am. All visits will be triaged by telephone by a GP to assess if a visit is needed. Please be aware a GP may advise you require hospital admission without seeing you in line with current Coronavirus guidelines.
Appointments are for one person only
Sometimes we are asked to see another patient during a consultation, e.g. being asked to see a wife who has attended with her husband. This causes delays to the surgery, problems for the patients waiting to be seen and for the doctor or nurse who may well feel that they need to find out more about what the problem is before suggesting a further appointment.
Where to be seen?
If we hold your written records at Elm Lane then please could you make an appointment at Elm Lane. If we hold your records at Chapeltown then please make your appointment there. If you don’t need a face-to-face consultation then we will make telephone appointments – please ask the receptionist. A telephone consultation will take as long as one in the surgery. Normally a doctor or nurse would ring you at approximately the time made. Bear in mind that we do run late during some surgeries.
Telephone Triage
We run telephone triage surgeries on Monday-Friday mornings and on other days if we are particularly busy or have fewer available appointments during holiday times or if there are members of the team on sick leave. The doctors doing the surgery will ring back any patient requesting an urgent appointment or wanting urgent advice. It is not possible to give an appointment time to you during these surgeries as there are often large numbers of calls to make and some may take longer than expected. If you have time constraints please let the receptionist know. We will always try to accommodate any difficulties. We are happy to ring you at home or at work or on a mobile phone.
Children
We are happy to see unaccompanied minors as long as they are old enough and sensible enough to be able to consent to and to understand treatment and advice. This is usually around the age of 14 but may be later than that. If the doctor or nurse has any doubts then they will ask the patient to return with a parent or guardian or older friend/relative. Young people are assured of confidentiality the same as any other patient. We won’t tell anyone about your problems unless you consent to it.
GP and Nurse Appointments on weekday evenings and at weekends
GP practices in Sheffield are working together to test a range of ways to improve access to general practice. If you feel you need to be seen urgently, but would struggle to get to the surgery during our opening hours, we can access later appointments for you locally, so please ring and we will book these. You will need to ask to speak to a GP first.
For more information about this service please see the link below.
www.primarycaresheffield.org.uk/extended-access/patients/