The admin team have been asked by the Partners to ask all patients looking for an appointment for a brief description of their complaint: this is to ensure they get the right care, with the right person at the right time. This is a Lothian wide initiative.
Can normally be booked in advance. We offer a limited number of early morning Nurse / Health Care Assistant appointments (from 0740). We do not offer evening or weekend appointments.
These appointments are intended for people with problems that need to be dealt with before the next routine appointment.
If you wish to make an appointment with a doctor or a nurse, contact reception before 12 noon. If there are no appointments left / available and the matter is deemed suitable for a same / next day appointment, the receptionist will take details of the condition the patient is suffering from and forward them to the Emergency Doctor who will make an assessment and decide how best to progress the matter.
All urgent calls will be dealt with as soon as possible. Non-urgent calls will be dealt with in two working days.
If you cannot keep an appointment – please cancel as soon as possible so we can offer it to someone else.
We don’t offer double appointments other than where there is a need for a third party to assist with the appointment such as an interpreter. Administration staff will advise. Our appointments are 15mins long and designed to deal with one clinical issue only. Where patients have multiple issues to raise during an appointment, the clinician may advise that another appointment has to be made or they may be asked to prioritise the issues they deem most serious or make another future appointments. Clinicians running late is unfortunate but it does happen; however, raising one condition per appointment helps keep the system on schedule. Patients should also be aware that appointments at the end of a morning or afternoon session doesn’t mean the clinician can carry on dealing with multiple issues – clinicians will have accumulated important administrative work during their sessions (such as referrals etc) which need attention that day.