Appointments

Our Practice in common with Practices and Hospitals across Scotland and the UK are experiencing difficulties in recruiting medical staff – in our case GPs. For the Practice this has meant that we are not only short of regular GP capacity but are unable to cover planned and unplanned GP absences with Locum GPs.

Our appointment system as detailed on the Appointments Tab has not altered. However due to the shortages mentioned above we have a more limited number of regular GP appointments to offer to patients on a regular basis. When these regular appointments are taken up then only requests for emergency appointments will be taken by our reception staff. On some days there have only been emergency appointments available due to GP capacity. It should be emphasised that all requests for emergency appointments are reviewed by a GP and an appropriate course of action decided on and communicated to the patient.

The Practice is actively taking steps to increase the GP capacity and to fully utilise all other medical resources available including our Practice Nurses and referrals where appropriate to local Pharmacies, Opticians and NHS Inform

Patients can help us through this difficult situation by ensuring when they have a non emergency request for medical advice that in the first instance, they utilise other appropriate resources such as the local Pharmacy or optician or go online to NHS Inform