Appointments

Our doctors and nurses see patients by appointment.

Patients are registered with the practice as a whole and not with individual doctors. You are therefore entitled to see and continue seeing any doctor of your choice. Patients are put under a specific doctor’s name for administrative purposes only. If you have an urgent problem which cannot wait for the next available appointment for your usual doctor, you may be requested to see another doctor.

Alternatives to seeing a doctor in person

The practice has a procedure in place which enables you to speak to your GP should you need advice. You can ring up leave your name and number a brief message and the doctor will ring you back during the afternoon surgery.

Monday mornings are always very busy. Please wait until later to call unless you need to see a doctor that morning.

Cancelling an appointment

If you have booked an appointment but are not able to attend for any reason, please let us know. Repeated failures to attend for appointments may jeopardise your continued registration at the practice.

Priority for Sick Children

Chaperone

You are entitled to ask or arrange for a chaperone to be present during intimate examinations. You may either choose to ask a friend or relative to be present or ask the practice to provide a chaperone. Please ask in advance if you wish the practice to provide a chaperone.

If the practice is unable to provide a chaperone at the time of your examiniation, you may be asked to re-book your appointment for a time when a chaperone is available.

Why your appointment may be late

Home Visits

If possible please try to telephone reception before 10:00 if you require a home visit.

A doctor or nurse may phone you back as it may be that your problem can be dealt with by telephone advice, or that it would be more appropriate to send a nurse, or indeed arrange a hospital attendance.

House visits are only available for patients who are housebound because of illness or disability.

Please remember that several patients can be seen in the practice in the time that it takes to make one home visit. There are also better facilities for examining and treating patients at the surgery.

Practice Information

Disabled Facilities

Parking

There is one parking space at the rear of the building for disabled patients holding a blue badge. The remaining spaces are for the use of doctors and nurses. There is a public car park on Bancroft opposite the surgery.

Extra doctor

Please note that we are approved under the GP Retainer Scheme and therefore will from time to time have a fully trained doctor working with us on a part-time basis.

GP Training

We are a teaching and training practice. This means that we have been approved by the Deanery to train doctors who wish to undertake additional training (from 4 months up to one year depending on where they are in their educational process) to become general practitioners, and by major teaching hospitals who have accredited us so that medical students come and join us for short periods as part of their general medical education.

Notes about training grades

Regal Chambers has been closely involved with the training of doctors at various stages of their career for many years. Details of the training grades are shown below.

Medical students

The students at Regal Chambers are in the later stages of their training and are close to taking their final medical exams to become qualified doctors. They sometimes see patients with their supervising GP and may see patients on their own but are always very closely supervised. Any decisions about patient care or prescribing of medications is made in conjunction with the supervising GP.

Doctors in training

After qualifying all doctors have to complete further training as they work towards becoming a GP or hospital specialist. There are 2 types of post graduate training carried out in General practice:

1. The Foundation Programme

This is a two-year training programme for doctors after leaving medical school and doctors can choose from posts in hospital and in General practice. These doctors may not be intending to specialise as GPs.

We sometimes have doctors in the second year of this training (called FY2’s). They will see patients in 20 minute appointments and can make decisions about patient care and prescribe medications without first discussing these with a GP. However the supervising GP is always available to advise the FY2 while the patient is present. All patients are discussed directly after the surgery with a supervising GP.

2. GP Specialty training

These doctors have all completed the 2 year Foundation programme following medical qualification and are now training to become GPs. The training lasts 3 years and thus they may be:

¨  1^st year Specialty Trainees (ST1’s)

¨  2nd year Specialty Trainees (ST2’s)

¨  3rd year Specialty Trainees (ST3’s)

The same supervision is in place for these doctors as with the FY2’s above, although as these doctors become more experienced they will make more of their own decisions and so need to consult their supervising GP less often when the patient is with them. The breadth of knowledge of the doctors will clearly depend on what experience they have had previously and this is taken into account in their supervision. Patients are always discussed directly after the surgery with a supervising GP. All of these doctors start with 20 minute appointments but this will reduce to10-15 minutes as appropriate for the individual doctor as they gain in experience and get closer to completing their GP training.