Appointments

Check your symptoms, visit NHS 111 online.

Call 111 at any time, 24 hours a day. You will speak to NHS professional staff who will help guide you on any medical issue.

• No appointment necessary
• Many pharmacists have a confidential area
• Open till late and at weekends

• NHS: find a pharmacy

• Visit a minor eye conditions service optician

• NHS: find a dentist

If you feel you cannot wait and want to be assessed urgently (i.e. the same day), you may be advised that the doctor may call you back to discuss your problem and decide the best course of action.

If your need is urgent we will offer you an appointment on the same day if we have capacity. This will often be for conditions that:

• are severe
• are persisting or getting worse despite several days medication from the pharmacist
• have not previously cleared up within a few days

We will endeavour to see the following patients on the same day if asked to do so:

• Children under age 5
• Women with problems in pregnancy
• Terminally ill patients

If you believe you need to be assessed on the same day the staff will take your details, speak to a doctor, and phone you back.

Where you want an appointment with the practice nurse you should advise the receptionist of the reason (blood pressure check, diabetic review, etc) so that she can allocate the appropriate time for your appointment.

Healthcare assistants (HCAs) are involved in direct patient care or investigations. They do not have a medical or any nursing qualification and therefore work under the instruction doctor and nurse led protocols.

The role of the healthcare assistant is an innovation in the National Health Service and there are an increasing number of such staff in many areas of healthcare including general practice. Their role is being developed to address an increasing shift of work to general practice and their duties include performing investigations requested by clinicians (usually the doctor or nurse) such as phlebotomy (blood taking), blood pressure, weight and height monitoring, urinalysis, pill checks, spirometry and ECG (testing only, not interpretation), glucose tolerance testing and INR (Warfarin) finger-prick testing.

Your community midwife holds clinics at Burtonwood Brach on alternate Monday mornings and every Monday, mornings and afternoons, at the High Street branch.

Medicines in pregnancy

Some medicines, including common painkillers, can harm your baby’s health. Other medicines are safe, such as medication to treat long term conditions like asthma, overactive thyroid, underactive thyroid, diabetes and epilepsy.

To be sure a medicine is safe in pregnancy: talk to your doctor immediately if you take regular medication, ideally before you start trying for a baby or as soon as you find out you are pregnant. If you’re taking regular medication, don’t stop taking it without consulting your doctor. Make sure your doctor, dentist or other healthcare professional knows you’re pregnant before they prescribe anything or give you treatment use as few over-the-counter medicines as possible.

Medicines and treatments that are usually safe include:

• paracetamol
• most antibiotics
• dental treatments, including local anaesthetics
• some types of vaccinations, including tetanus
• flu nicotine replacement therapy (NRT)
  However, always check with your midwife, doctor or pharmacist first.

You should avoid alcohol, stop smoking and take a Folic acid supplement. For more information please see the information provided by nhs.uk.

If you would like help to stop smoking please make an appointment with a practice nurse to discuss the smoking cessation services and treatment options, or you can self refer to smoking cessation service.

Why do I need Folic Acid?

Folic acid is important for pregnancy as it can help prevent birth defects known as neural tube defects, such as spina bifida. If you didn’t take folic acid before you conceived, you should start as soon as you find out that you are pregnant. You should take a 400 microgram folic acid tablet every day while you are trying to get pregnant and until you are 12 weeks pregnant. It is cheaper to purchase this over the counter at the pharmacy than to obtain a prescription.

Did you know that there is an enhanced access service, which enables you to see a variety of healthcare professionals at convenient local locations?

• Doctors
• ANPs
• Nurses
• Pharmacists
• Podiatrists

If you cannot attend an appointment during practice opening hours, the enhanced access service has you covered.

Do you need:

• A review of your long-term conditions (diabetes, hypertension, COPD, heart disease, asthma)
• A new patient health check
• A medication review
• Contraception advice
• A routine HRT review

The enhanced access service is there for you. Please contact the surgery on Patterdale Lodge Medical Centre 01925 227111 or High Street Surgery 01925 227111 or Burtonwood Village Surgery 01925 222 012 and we can book you an appointment.

We are required by NHS England to provide extended access to GP services, including at evenings and weekends, for their population. On 1st October 2018, phase one of the improving access to general practice service began introducing 7-day access to GP services in St Helens with pre-bookable appointments outside normal surgery hours.

On Monday 26th November 2018, phase 2 of the service began which increased the number of locations offering appointments outside of normal surgery hours to three, with the fourth location preparing to go live in January 2019.

This service increases residents’ access to routine GP and advanced nurse practitioner (ANP) appointments on evenings and weekends. Appointments are pre-bookable by your registered GP practice.

However, the appointments will not be with your regular GP or advanced nurse practitioner and will be at ‘hubs’ across St Helens with a GP or ANP who will have access to the same health records as your regular GP.

When and where are appointments available?

Rainhill Clinic, View Road, Rainhill, L35 0LE

• Monday to Friday 5pm to 9pm

Millennium Centre, Corporation Street, St Helens, WA10 1HJ

• Monday to Friday 5:30pm to 9pm
• Saturday 8pm to 3pm
• Sunday 8am to midday

Woodside Health Centre, Woodside Road, Haydock, WA11 0NA

• Saturday 9am to midday
• Sunday 9am to midday

How do I access these services?

All patients registered with a St Helens GP will be able to book appointments with their local extended access service by contacting their own registered GP practice.

Would you like to receive a free text message to confirm your appointment? Its easy, just give us your mobile phone number and we will add it to our database.

If you wish to register for this messaging service please fill out the consent form.

Reducing missed appointments

Every missed appointment costs the NHS £36.00. We hope by introducing this service we are able to reduce the number of missed appointments and save NHS resources. It is also a quicker and cheaper method of contacting patients than writing.

The type of messages we will send

There are numerous reasons that we may want to contact you using text messaging. Some typical examples include:

• A text confirmation of an upcoming surgery appointment.*
• To ask you to contact us so that we can deliver a non-urgent message.
• To invite you to participate in national health care programs such as cancer screening, childhood or influenza immunisations campaigns or NHS health checks.

Can I use this service to contact my doctor? 

No. If you need to speak to your doctor, please phone or make an appointment.

What if I do decide not to participate? 

Simply tell us you don’t wish to receive text messages from us and we will remove your number from the service.

What happens if I change my mobile number? 

You need to let us know your new number as soon as possible so we can continue the reminder service to your mobile phone.

We will never breach patient confidentiality using the text messaging service.

Patterdale Lodge Group Practice cannot guarantee the successful delivery of text messages to each individual recipient. The service depends on the individual cellular and mobile phone carriers to deliver SMS messages. There may be a charge by your mobile phone provider to receive SMS messages when you are abroad. We confirm an appointment date and time by text message at the time of booking, however, we do not text out appointment reminders. It is the individual’s responsibility to access their text messages. The onus remains with the individual to ensure they attend for appointments and respond to text message requests. If you have changed your mobile phone number or wish to register your mobile number with us please contact us and we will update your record. We do not offer this service to patients under 16 years old.

The GPs try to run to time, but, some patients need longer, causing surgeries to run late. As a result patients may be kept waiting. If surgery is running late please be patient. Next time it may be you who needs extra time with the doctor.

As a general rule, if you are more than 5 minutes late for your appointment please expect to re-book it.  Late arrivals for appointments over the day can result in the surgeries running very late and causes inconvenience to others.

We wish to offer appointments that meet your medical needs as far as possible, bearing in mind our need to serve all our other patients too. We book appointments at 15 minute intervals so that we have sufficient time to evaluate the problem and agree a management plan together.

In order that our staff may arrange the right service for you they will ask you to outline the nature of your problem.

The practice have a strict policy to tackle the issue of appointments that are called ‘DNA’s’.  These are appointment slots that are pre-booked by patients and then that patient fails to attend, without letting the Practice know.

As I am sure you are aware, appointments are scarce within the whole of general practice, as we are busier than we have ever been before. This is the reason that sometimes it can be a wait for an appointment. Therefore when we have a patient that does not attend, it is extremely frustrating for the practice, as someone else could have been given that appointment. We always ask that you let us know if you cannot make an appointment.

Please cancel, Don’t DNA

Below are some examples of alternatives to a GP appointment:

• Sick notes after hospital treatment can often be completed from hospital letters as requested by the patients
• Continuation sick notes can often be completed a few days after the GP has seen you and these can be backdated to run continuously
• The minor injuries unit at the St Helens Millennium Centre will deal with almost all kinds of injuries and have X-ray facilities
• The walk-in centre is a same-day service for anyone who wishes to see a clinician without an appointment
• Dental problems cannot be treated here.  In an emergency you can receive emergency dental treatment which you can access via NHS 111.
• The morning after pill, post-coital contraception, can be obtained from many pharmacies free of charge or from the family planning clinic. Details are available from reception.
• The midwives provide much of the care for women during and after pregnancy and can be contacted directly on 0151 430 1492.
• Care at the pharmacy at local pharmacist, please check with reception, offers treatment for:
  • Allergy
  • Athletes foot
  • Cold sores
  • Chesty cough
  • Constipation
  • Diarrhoea
  • Dry cough
  • Headache/temperature
  • Head lice
  • Indigestion
  • Nasal congestion
  • Oral thrush
  • Sore throat
  • Threadworm
  • Vaginal thrush
  • Children over 12 months, and adults, can obtain antibiotic eye drops for conjunctivitis