Appointments

Request an appointment

To request an appointment:

  • Please phone us on 01254 915740, Monday to Friday from 8am to 6.30pm (we recommend calling between 8am -10am for an urgent matter)

Appointments are available to book up to two weeks in advance

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

We will use the information you give us to choose the most suitable doctor, nurse or health professional to help you.

Your appointment

However you choose to contact us, we may offer you a consultation:

  • by phone
  • face to face at the surgery
  • on a video call
  • by text or email

Appointments by phone, video call or by text or email can be more flexible and often means you get help sooner.

We have an ‘Early Surgery’ from 7.30am to 8am Monday – Friday.

Please contact reception for further information.

Cancelling or changing an appointment

To cancel your appointment:

  • use your NHS account (through the NHS website or NHS App)
  • phone us on 01254 915740, Monday to Friday from 8am to 6.30pm
  • reply CANCEL to your appointment reminder text message

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

Home visits

Whilst we encourage our patients to come to the surgery, where we have the proper equipment and facilities available, we do appreciate this is not always possible. In this respect, if you do need a home visit, please whenever possible call reception before 11am.

You may only request a home visit if you are housebound or are too ill to visit the practice. Your GP will only visit you at home if they think that your medical condition requires it and will also decide how urgently a visit is needed. Please bear this in mind and be prepared to provide suitable details to enable the doctor to schedule house calls

You can also be visited at home by a community nurse if you are referred by your GP. You should also be visited at home by a health visitor if you have recently had a baby or if you are newly registered with a GP and have a child under five.

Urgent home visits

The Acute Visiting Service will be used when a patient telephones the surgery requesting an urgent visit. An urgent visit is when a patient requires a visit within 4 hours of contacting the GP practice.

In most cases, to visit the following would not be clinically indicated:
– common Symptoms of childhood
– fevers
– cold
– cough
– earache
– headache
– diarrhoea/vomiting
– abdominal pain (most cases of)

These patients are usually well enough to travel by car. It is not harmful to take a child with a fever outside. These children may not be fit to travel by bus or to walk, but car transport is generally available from friends, relatives or taxi companies. We regret that the surgery cannot arrange transport to the surgery.

Adults with common problems, such as cough, sore throat, influenza, back pain and abdominal pain are also readily transportable to the surgery.

Common problems in the elderly, such as poor mobility, joint pain, and general malaise would also best be managed in the surgery.

The exception to this rule would be the truly bed-bound.

GP visit recommended

GP home visiting makes clinical sense and is the best way to give a medial opinion in cases involving

  • Terminal illness
  • The truly bed bound patient for whom travel to premises by car would cause a deterioration to their medical condition or cause unacceptable discomfort.

GP visit may be useful

After an initial assessment over the telephone, a seriously ill patient may be helped by a GPs attendance to prepare them for travel to hospital; that is, where a GP’s other commitment does not prevent him/her arriving before the ambulance.

Examples of such a situation are:-

  • Heart attacks/severe chest pain
  • Severe shortness of breath
  • Severe bleeding

In some cases it may be appropriate for the GP to arrange for an emergency ambulance.

Care Navigation

Across Blackburn with Darwen, work is being done by the Clinical Commissioning Group (CCG) to make sure that when people need to see a GP, they have access to one quickly and in a way that suits them, be that in person or over the phone.

Sometimes though, the GP isn’t really the best person to see. Patients could be seen and treated quicker by a nurse or a pharmacist for example and in some cases, the GP practice might not be the right place at all for the query. That’s where care navigation comes in.

Care navigation supports practices and patients to make the best use of valuable NHS resources.

Five services are currently available for care navigators to signpost to and more will be added as this develops. These are:

  • Dental
  • Minor Eye Treatment Service
  • Health and Wellbeing
  • Age UK
  • Community Pharmacy