General Chat

have had brilliant service from ours today. School sent Zo home as her armm was swollen and sore and its from where she was playing with dog 10 days ago and he caught her with his tooth and grazed her birthmark. Was no blood at time just look layer of skin off so cleaned it and put sudo cream on. Now her birthmark is one of the raised strawberry type marks so is always red/puple so hard to tell difference.

When I got her home rang surgery but had no appts but she would ask dr to call me about it. within 15 mins they rang back with appt for this morning after surgery was over and when got there were straight in my bum hadnt even warmed the seat and Zo was just going to sit down. Told me he could of rung me but would of had to of seen her as well to make sure so might as well get her in and shes now on stroing antibiotics for a week.

I know its hard to get appointments when you ring up but cant fault them today

Hope your daughter's arm gets better quickly. We have a very good surgery and have no bother seeing doctors, so no complaints from us. :-)

shes fine doing some maths at home. Ours have changed the system they use and can now book online so makes it a bit easier for future appointments its just on the day ones are a nightmare although we do have an extra Dr now so hopefully wont be as bad.

Hope your daughter arms heals soon Dawnie...I have to say the doctors I have are fantastic I cant fault them.....I tend to only use the one doctor and I have to go and see him every 3/4 weeks, if I dont go I get a checkup call or a text from the surgery...
The system here is if you ring at 8.30am you are more than likely to get an appointment that day, mind you there are 9/10 doctors at the surgery.......Im very lucky and my doctor is amazing !! a caring and sincere doctor......

Dawnieher3headaches - I hope your wee lassie's arm heals quite quickly, well spotted by you, can't be too careful with dog bites, even a small nip can turn nasty.

As for doctor's, I have to see the doctor quite regularly, never had to wait more than 24 hours for an appointment, the practice has 2 doctors and 1 nurses, and I have no complaints whatsoever about the service they provide, likewise no complaints about my numerous stays in hospital.

I often think they deliberately hype up the problems with the NHS to hide what they are trying to do with the NHS.

At the end of the day it all comes down to the way it is managed.

We had two surgeries in the same premises until a year ago - one managed well, the other a disorganised shambles. The latter was eventually forced to close and most patients were absorbed into the performing one.

Yes, there were a few problems with the sudden increase in numbers but it soon sorted itself out.

Appointments are graded according to urgency - non urgent, reviews etc are usually scheduled within a week. Urgent cases are seen that day or worse the next. We also have on-line booking which means you can sometimes grab a last minute cancellation too.

Overall, no real complaints.

We have to phone at 8am and I have not had a problem with same day appointments. Not been to the doctor now for over a year so I am assuming nothing has changed. We can book on line, there are a few appointments reserved for on line booking.

Well done your surgery though, they were obviously concerned enough to fit her in.

So true IGP, the doctor side of ours is great, the practice management NOT. This was my experience this afternoon.

I saw on our Doctors' Surgery website last night that they now do on-line booking (at last!) and that you have to go to the surgery with ID to apply for a username and password. Off I trouped after lunch and waited in the queue patiently. When I got to the desk I asked if I could apply to use the online service and appointment booking. 'We can't do that yet' was the snapped reply with a look that suggested I was a fool to even be asking. 'But it tells you on the website to bring ID to the surgery to register' I replied. Much headshaking then and more 'we can't do that yet'. 'So why does it say you can on the website?,' I responded. By then she was looking past me to serve the next patient and said in a bit of a sing song, sarcastic tone 'what website is that then?'. 'YOUR website' I replied. That got her attention back. 'What, the surgery website?' she said. 'Yes, that's why I am here' I said. 'Oh, well we don't know, no-one's told us, but that doesn't surprise me, we are the last to know anything'. With that off she went without even an 'excuse me a moment' to ask the Practice Manager. When she came back she said the Practice Manager did know about it and that they would photocopy my ID and 'be in touch'. I asked how long that might take and she just threw her arms up in the air. 'In that case I'd better make an appointment to see a doctor while I'm here then' I said. The response to that was 'we have no pre-booked appointments available at the moment'. No advice as to how I then proceed to obtain an appointment. Couldn't make it up could you!! No apology, no professionalism, no clue about customer service. The trouble is they think how they do things is fine, because they don't know how much they don't know!!!

We have to phone very early in the morning, say a Monday for an appointment the FOLLOWING Monday evening, if you miss that and all the appointments are gone, you have to phone Tuesday for the following Tuesday. You can just walk in every morning, but when people work its not easy. It was changed to try out about a year ago from walk in in the evening and appointments in the morning.

You could then call anytime for an appointment, now the computer wont let you book unless its the right day.

Think you have to have an insight and know the week before if you wont be feeling too good but can still work. :-(