Appointments

Information:

Find out how we deal with your request

Urgent appointments

To request an urgent appointment for today or tomorrow (Monday to Friday) during opening times:

When you get in touch, we’ll ask what you need help with.

We will use your answers to choose the most suitable doctor, nurse or healthcare professional to help you.

Routine appointments

You can request a routine appointment in advance during opening times.

Get help for any health problem

We will respond to requests within 2 working days.

You can also:

Please ensure you check your emails regularly for our response.

Routine appointments are usually booked or arranged in advance and you will be seen by a clinician such as a nurse or healthcare assistant.

  • Blood pressure checks
  • Blood tests
  • Cervical smear
  • Family planning and sexual health advice
  • and others…

Please arrive on time for pre-booked appointments taking into account logistical difficulties or the time involved in travelling to the surgery. If you arrive late you will need to re-book your appointment.

Changes to our appointment system

In order to try and make it easier to understand and improve access to the doctors we have changed our GP appointment system:

Our appointment system

A little information about how our appointment system is set up.

We have two full time general practitioners (GP) partners at this practice and one salaried GP. In addition to seeing patients at the surgery, our doctors have to fit in the following work:

  • Home visits
  • Medical reports
  • Patient referral letters
  • Dealing with correspondence regarding patients
  • Processing and checking repeat prescription requests
  • Clinical audit work
  • Continuing education and update
  • Negotiation and correspondence with the Gloucestershire Clinical Commissioning Group (CCG) and Care Quality Commission (CQC)
  • Monitoring of performance against Department of Health targets
  • Appraisals
  • General administration of practice business

Our GPs are also involved in the following activities outside practice time:

  • Out of hours shifts
  • Medical politics
  • Meetings
  • Continuous professional learning
  • Private medical work at patients’ request, e.g. medical examinations, medical reports, certification

As you will appreciate, the doctors’ time needs to be carefully managed in order to fit everything into their schedule.

We try to offer a range of appointment times and modes of access to GP advice, to cater for the great majority of our patients. Our doctors have set their holiday entitlement within the partnership to maximise time available for patients and the above work, while ensuring they get rest away from the practice to achieve a safe work-life balance. We make use of locum doctors to cover gaps in appointment provision where and when required.

Our practice nurse team is a great resource to us and an appointment with one of them is often an appropriate alternative to a GP. Our reception staff are able to guide patients in deciding if this might be appropriate if given some idea of the issue. If a patient feels they need to be urgently seen, we will do our very best to accommodate them. In order to get the best from our appointment system, we need to monitor the number of wasted appointments. We request that patients do their best to let us know as early as possible when they cannot attend a booked appointment so that it can be offered to somebody else. Appointments can be cancelled via speaking with the reception team, online or through our cancellation voicemail that is monitored continually (please note that we cannot rearrange appointments or book a new appointment through the cancellation voicemail service).

Patients should be aware that if too many appointments are missed without prior warning or cancelling, this may result in you being removed from the surgery’s patient list.

Patients wishing to use the online services should ask our reception staff. Where patients feel a query can be addressed by talking to a doctor by telephone, this can be arranged with one of our receptionists. We are grateful that in most cases our patients are understanding of the above and request appointments only where necessary. We thank you for working with us to make the most of the available appointments.

Routine appointments

These are pre-booked and you will know the time and the doctor.

Telephone appointments

Since the COVID-19 pandemic the bulk of the appointments for the GPs have been moved to phone calls. There are appointments for routine phone calls with each GP throughout the morning and afternoon, used to discuss results, letters and other routine matters.

There are also appointments for same day issues that run throughout the day. If you wish to speak with a GP, reception will book you in for an initial phone call and should the GP decide you need to be seen face to face, they will offer you an appointment to come in to the surgery while on the phone with you. Please make sure you give reception the correct contact details and a reason for the call when booking the appointment.

Increased access

The increased access scheme allows for patients to be booked in for acute (afternoons) and routine (weekend and evenings) appointments with GPs and nurses at any of the surgeries within the Forest of Dean Cluster.

To book these you will need to contact the reception team who will offer the available appointments and inform you who it will be with, the time of the appointment and where the clinic is being held. Please note that currently due to the COVID-19 pandemic, the increased access scheme is only able to run the afternoon clinics.

Whilst we try to run to time, our philosophy is that patients will be given the time they need regardless of whether the doctor is running late.

Appointments may also be booked for the practice nurse, HCAs and midwife.

For details, please go to the Forest GP Surgeries website: www.forestgpsurgeries.co.uk.

Practice nurse appointments

The nursing team are taking on more and more of the care previously and traditionally carried out by doctors. Their roles are therefore expanding and their appointments ever more precious.

We also have qualified healthcare assistants in Sharon Hall and Christine Johnston who work alongside the nursing team to provide additional care to our patients. Their duties include but are not limited to taking bloods, blood pressure readings, B12 injections, minor dressings, ECGs and some annual reviews. Our reception staff are trained to put you in with the best suited practitioner for your needs and availability.

We have 2 practice nurses who have taken advanced training in long term conditions, including Asthma, COPD and Diabetes.

Phoning the practice

If you need to speak to a doctor please phone 01594 845715 to make an appointment for a phone consultation. The bulk of appointments are currently being completed via phone appointments. We ask that you are sure to give reception the best contact number and a reason for your appointment as this will assist the doctors when they come to your call. Please note that calls from the surgery come from a withheld or private number.

Like all businesses, we find our phone lines are busier at some times than others. The following information may help you when contacting us by telephone.

Our lines are busiest between 8:30am and 9:30am each morning and between 2pm and 2:30pm each afternoon. The dispensary telephone line is only open between 3pm and 5pm for medication and prescription queries.

Private appointments

Limited private appointments are available only for patients who are not registered with the doctors of the practice for NHS care.

Cancelling or changing an appointment

Please inform us promptly in the event of a cancellation so that we can allocate the appointment to another patient.

To cancel your appointment:

Home visits

If possible please try to phone reception before 10am if you require a home visit. A doctor or nurse may phone you back as it may be that your problem can be dealt with by telephone advice, or that it would be more appropriate to send a nurse, or indeed arrange a hospital attendance.

House visits are only available for patients who are housebound because of illness or disability.

Please remember that several patients can be seen in the practice in the time that it takes to make one home visit. There are also better facilities for examining and treating patients at the surgery.

If you need help when we are closed

If you need medical help now, use NHS 111 online or call 111.

NHS 111 online is for people aged 5 and over. Call 111 if you need help for a child under 5.

Call 999 in a medical or mental health emergency. This is when someone is seriously ill or injured and their life is at risk.

If you need help with your appointment

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

Related information

Health A to Z

Sick notes

Test results