PATCHS is our online consultation platform, you can use this to contact the surgery and your request will be reviewed by a clinician. They will either action your request, give advice or bring you in to see them depending on the request.

You can access the system by clicking on the image opposite.

Please be aware that PATCHS will not be available 24 hours a day. It can be accessed through your own online access or via reception.

However, for your convenience we have asked that PATCHS is available from 8am.

You can request an appointment via the PATCHS service as shown above, please clink on the link and register to submit your request. This will be forwarded to our clinicians to triage who will responded to you promptly. If appropriate, an appointment will be booked for you and you will be advised of this through the PATCHS service.

Triage will provide, same day urgent appointments either face to face or telephone, here or at the Hub in Manor Street. Advanced bookings or referrals to approriate services.

If you choose to call reception for your appointment you can still do this, they will complete a PATCHS request on you behalf and this will be forwarded to the clinician to review.

This new service ensures that appointments are booked based on clinical need rather than a first come first served basis. They will also book advanced appointments should they be needed.

You will never be asked to call back the following day for an appointment, everything will be aranged for you.

The Partners require the patient to provide as much detail as possible when booking an appointment. This is to ensure that all patients are signposted to the most appropriate service within the surgery. Please respect our staff when information is requested.

Should the doctor or nurse wish to see you for a follow up they will either book this themselves or provide the information to reception.

We strongly advise that you book appointments with a nurse as early as possible as they tend to get booked quite quickly.  Some appointments need to be booked in to fit in with your current treatment.  For example the contraceptive injection, dressings etc. To accommodate these types of appointments, we offer some pre-bookable appointments with our nurses at the beginning of morning and some afternoon surgeries.

Holiday vaccination requests need to be submitted well in advance of your departure date minimum of eight weeks before travelling as many of the vaccinations need to be administered weeks and in some cases months before your departure date for them to be effective.   Please complete a Holiday Travel Planner form which will also give you information about the charges for certain vaccines.

Our nurse appointment times vary in length depending on the type of consultation.  The receptionists need to have an indication of what the appointment is for so that they can allocate the right amount of time for you. 

Details of our nurse clinics can be found here.

Our nurses run a minor ailments clinic on a daily basis for which they have received specialised training.  The appointments for this clinic operate on a 'book on the day' basis.  There are dedicated clinics run both in the mornings and afternoons which will be booked using the PATCHS traige service. Please make your request via PATCHS or with reception

This clinic is suitable for:

• Coughs
• Ear, nose and throat problems
• Diarrhoea and sickness
• Rashes
• Cystitis and other urine infections
• Conjunctivitis
• Thrush
• Emergency contraception
• And much more.

Our Nurses are qualified prescribers and can issue a prescription where appropriate

If possible please try to telephone reception before 10am if you require a home visit.

You may only request a home visit if you are housebound or are too ill to visit the practice. Your doctor will only visit you at home if they think that your medical condition requires it and will also decide how urgently a visit is needed.

You can be visited at home by a community nurse if you are referred by your doctor. You should also be visited at home by a health visitor if you have recently had a baby or if you are newly registered with a doctor and have a child under five years.

We have a team of the practice pharmacists.  The pharmacist will see all appropriate patients for medication reviews and support the management of chronic diseases. 

Our reception team will ensure you are booked appropriately.

Once you have seen a doctor within the practice, should further investigations be required the doctor will refer you to the appropriate service within the NHS. 

The doctor will request the secretaries prepare the referral which can take up to five days, however if the referral is of urgent nature the request will be escalated.  The referral once approved by the doctor will be sent to the appropriate service whether this be in the community of the hospital. 

The majorityof referrals to hospital specialist  teams and sent to the Referral Support Service (RSS). Their role is to review the referral to ensure it is being sent to the correct service within the NHS and that sufficient detail has been applied to the referral.

At this point, the RSS are then responsible for contacting the patient directly either by phone or letter. Patients have a choice of which hospital they would like to attend for their appointment and usually offered a choice of dates. You are able to change your appointment on two occasions, any other changes or "Did not attend" will mean you will be discharged and a new referral has to be made. Please be mindful of the NHS costs associated with you having to be re-referred. Further information about the RSS can be found here

Once your referral has been relayed to the RSS the practice has no way of knowing how long it will be before you are contacted.

Patients can contact the RSS directly after 5 workings day of seeing the doctor. Patients can then discuss directly the progress of their referral. 

RRS patient contact number:   0300 4430120

Medical Secretaries

Telephone Number: 01376 347100 Option 6

The secretarial team are available from 08:30 until 16:30.  

Our dedicated cancellation line number is 01376 332999.

You can cancel an appointment by leaving a message - please remember to leave your name, date of birth and the details of the appointment you wish to cancel and provided at least 2 hours notice of the cancellation. This will ensure the practice is able to provide your unwanted appointment to another patient.  Alternatively you can cancel your appointment online via the link at the top of this page (registration is required for the online service).

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

We have a texting service which allows you to receive confirmation and reminders about your appointments.

To have this service you will need to register by completing a consent form.

Please remember to update your contact details with us when you change address, telephone numbers and email address.

Complete our SMS Reminder Form