Appointment Times & Late Arrivals

If you have booked an appointment to see a clinician at the surgery, please ensure that you arrive on or before your appointed time.

If you arrive late for your appointment, this could potentially have a knock-on effect on other patient’s appointments booked for that day.

As well as the increasing demand for appointments, we are also seeing more patients with very complex needs. Clinicians often struggle to address all of these needs within the allocated time-frame, as they have strict timescales to adhere to, especially when carrying out nursing procedures.

If patients are kept waiting to be seen when they have promptly arrived for their appointed time, understandably they may become upset and frustrated.

We understand that sometimes delays happen that are no-one’s fault, and our clinicians do have some discretion to see the patient, in exceptional circumstances, if time allows.

However, if the clinician is not able to see you, you will be asked to rebook your appointment for another day.

We thank you in advance for your co-operation.

Doctors Running Late

We sometimes receive complaints about doctors running late and patients having to wait for their appointments. We appreciate that this is frustrating for everyone involved so please allow us to inform you what you can do to help us, yourselves and other patients.

Multiple Problems per Appointment

  • This is one of the main reasons for doctors running late.
  • It can cause problems if you bring a long list of problems to a single appointment. Our appointments are in 10 minute slots. Although we will of course never simply cut you off after 10 minutes, it is usually difficult for a doctor to adequately deal with more than 1 problem in a 10 minute slot.
  • Please feel free to book more appointments or when you book, inform the receptionist that you have multiple issues you would like to discuss with the doctor (you do not have to reveal any details).

Patients Arriving Late

  • Please try to arrive on time for all appointments. Please inform us as soon as possible if you wish to cancel your appointment. If you are going to be late, please ring in to let us know.
  • It has been agreed by our Patient Representative Group and the surgery that if you are more than 10 minutes late for your appointment, you will be asked to re-book your appointment.  This will allow those who have arrived on time for their appointment to be seen promptly.

Multiple Patients per Appointment

  • The appointment is only for the person who is booked in for the appointment.  If you ask for other family members, who are not booked in, to be seen at the same time, it will cause everyone after you in the queue to be seen late. Please book a separate appointment for every person who you wish the doctor to see.
  • Booking one patient per appointment will reduce the likelihood of doctors running late.
  • If appointments are booked in good time you will probably be able to get 2 or 3 appointments one after the other.

Emergencies

  • Due to the nature of our work, occasionally we have unpredictable emergencies which we must deal with urgently. We ask for your patience in these matters and apologise for any inconvenience caused. One day the person with the emergency could be you!