Seeing the Doctor
West Bar Surgery has more than 18,000 patients. To keep up
with the demand for appointments a new appointment system, was
introduced called the Total Doctor Triage system.
West Bar staff has completed two trials of the system, The
trials were very successful.
We encourage you to make appointments with your "usual" doctor.
This may not be the doctor with whom you are registered; it will
be the doctor whom you know best. However, if you wish to
discuss a problem with a doctor of a different sex, we will do
our best to respect your request. There may be occasions when
your "usual" doctor is not available. Please be prepared to
accept an appointment with another doctor in these
circumstances. See Why
is my Doctor running late?
New Appointment System For West Bar Surgery
Following our recent Patient Satisfaction Survey we are now
pleased to be able to offer a new appointment
system. We hope that the new system will more closely meet the
needs of our patients and be easier for everyone to use.
As from April all the Doctors will be offering a mixture of
telephone and traditional surgery appointments. Often a
situation can be dealt with by your Doctor or a Nurse
Practitioner on the telephone. You may simply need some advice.
You may not be sure whether you need to come. A telephone
consultation enables you to stay at home or at work – without
needing to make arrangements for transport, child care, or
taking time off work.
Before requesting an appointment please decide:
A) Whether you would like a telephone or surgery appointment
B) Whether you need to speak to a nurse or a doctor. If the latter-
C) Which Doctor knows most about your medical history or the issue about which you are ringing
The telephone appointments are usually 4 minutes; the surgery
appointments are usually 10 minutes long.
This enabled us to offer more appointments each day, and give
you more choice of who you can speak to or see.
There is always some confusion when a system changed. Please
bear with us as we all settle into the new system.
We look forward to your feedback in the coming months.
Phone Calls from your Doctor
If you have requested a telephone call from the doctor, we will try 3 times, and if after that time have not managed to get hold of you, will not try again. We will also assume, unless you have specified otherwise, that you are happy for us to leave a message saying that we have tried to contact you. The message would be something like "Hello, it’s Doctor X returning your call, I’ll try again later" or "Hello, it’s Doctor X returning your call for the third time and I won’t be able to try again but if you still have problems, please contact the surgery".
Home Visits
If you are too ill to attend the surgery, please try to ring before 10.30am so that we can arrange for a doctor to visit you at home. Visits are usually done late morning or early afternoon.
Why is my Doctor running late?
Doctors and Nurses don't always run late. Quite often
patients are seen on time, and even seen early. Surgeries can
however, run late, especially towards the end of the day, which
can be a big inconvenience for patients and doctors.
All the doctors are in the building by 08.00am or shortly after,
to be ready to take the first patient at 8:00am (The doors are
open for patients at 8:00am).
If, for example, the first patient has a 08.00am appointment and
is late and arrives say at 8:20, when the doctor is taking the
8:20 patient, then the doctor is already running at least 10
minutes late before they have hardly started.
Blood tests are one of the procedures that are unpredictable,
some patients are hard to get blood out of, the nurse or
phlebotomist will try 2 or 3 times if they can’t get blood they
would then ask a doctor to come in and try, some patient while
having blood taken faint these unavoidable problems all add up
and go towards a Dr or nurse running late.
Appointments are booked at 10 minute intervals, but this does
not necessarily mean that you, the patient has 10 minutes
face-to-face with the doctor, during that 10 minutes, the Dr
listens to your problem, asks you questions which will help in
forming a diagnosis, examines you if needed (with a nurse if
required), a prescription supplied and advice given, perhaps
with arrangements for a follow-up visit; sometimes there will be
discussion about the need to be referred to see a hospital
specialist.
When the patient leaves the room, the doctor needs at least 2-3
minutes to type a full record of the consultation. So in any 10
minutes appointment, if the Dr is to keep to time, there are
only approx 7 minutes with the Dr.
Probably the two commonest reasons for the Dr running late are
when patients bring either a particularly complicated problem or
when they bring more than one problem:
Bringing more than 1 problem which you want the Dr to deal with
will invariably cause the Dr to run late. Some patients bring in
a list of problems. If the Dr deals with every problem on the
list, that patient will be content, but it means that subsequent
patients in the waiting room will be seen late.
If you think you have a complicated problem please ask for a 20
minute appointment at reception, the receptionist may ask you
why you need a 20 minute appointment, you do not need to tell
her what is wrong you just need to say you have a bit of a
complicated problem and it will take longer to discuss with the
doctor.
We hope that this explanation will help you understand why a
doctor or nurse can run late,
How you can help:
Turn up on time (if there is a queue at reception, why not try
the computerised check in system, directly in front of you as
you enter the reception area, this will only take 30 seconds to
1 minute
Before you see the Dr, think about your symptoms and what you
will tell him/her, how long have you had the symptoms, how
severe is it, does it come and go, what makes it worse or better
If the Dr (or nurse) is running late, please be patient and
understanding they may have been called out to a seriously ill
patient.
Thank you for your cooperation
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