Please read this. We think it will help you a lot.  
We want you to understand how our system works. Ideally we would like every patient to be able to see the doctor of their choice quickly, whenever they wanted. But obviously that cannot be done. So to help patients be able to get the advice they need and get rapid treatment when needed we organise things as follows. 

We classify appointments up into two sorts, "routine" and "emergency". The first sort are for problems that can wait, and the second sort are for things that cannot wait and have to be dealt with the same day or sooner. 

The problem is that as a patient you cannot always be expected to know what can wait and what cannot, and when we feel ill or are worried about our health we tend to feel that things are more urgent or serious than they often are. That is just human nature,  and we are all the same in this respect. 

As doctors we find that about 4 out of every 5 consultations that patients consider urgent are not urgent at all. This is not anybody's fault, it is just impossible to know, and we don't think we can change this much unless everybody becomes medically trained! 

So we solve this problem by helping you to know whether a problem is urgent or not ..........................So how do we do this? 

If you ring and ask for an routine appointment with a particular doctor you will be offered one. If it can be with any doctor  it will be quicker than if you specify a particular doctor, but you will be offered one in the next day or so. 

If you want an appointment  for today we assume this is because you think the problem is an urgent one, and because we want you to have any necessary treatment, we will do one of three things. 

1. We will take your phone number, ask for a brief idea of the type of problem, and get one of our nurses to ring you back to arrange the best treatment option (if the nurse thinks you need to see a doctor quickly she can arrange this by allocating an appointment that is not available to receptionists).  

2. If a nurse was available to speak to you immediately that would be done.

3. If the problem is obviously very urgent or a nurse was not available you would be able to talk to the duty doctor..........................There is always a doctor available for advice at the health centre and the nurses dealing with cases in this way are constantly checking all these activities with the duty doctor

........................But we are not a walk-in casualty station. We do not have staff standing around waiting for people to walk in! We are all working with booked appointments, or doing the clerical work that medical care creates. Of course, if an emergency occurs and it seems more sensible to come along than telephone, that is OK, but you will be treated in exactly the same way as if you had telephoned. You will have to sit down and wait until a nurse is available to deal with you (when she has finished phoning any other emergencies and dealing with current patients), or maybe you would be better waiting comfortably at home until she can phone you.