Appointments

Triage of Clinical Requests

Our absolute priority is maintain a safe level of care. This requires us to prioritise the patients who need care of most urgently. To do this, we need information from you about your problem.

We understand that patients contact us by phone and that is absolutely fine. We ask that you consider alternative options to ensure you see the right person at the right time. These may include self-care, visiting the pharmacy to use the Pharmacy First Service, or a local a local optician for eye problems, or a dentist for mouth problems. Our trained reception staff will ask some questions when you call to ensure they can direct your call appropriately so please don’t get frustrated if they suggest an alternative to seeing a GP. The sheer volume of patient contacts that we now get each day is several times higher than we could achieve if we spoke to or saw everyone. So although there are lots of things that we (and you) don’t like about these systems, we have had to introduce them to ensure we are getting to care for those that need help most urgently.