Appointments Explained

When you contact the surgery, via reception desk, phone or online Klinik Form. All enquires are processed through Klinik.

The appointment requests are triaged by our experienced GPs.

 

You will then be offered an appointment with the person who is best placed to help your needs. This response comes in the form of a text message or phone call depending on your contact preferences. You may be given advice about self care or advised to discuss your concerns with your local pharmacist.

Every GP within their session has three appointments they control the booking into. So, if a follow up is required they can directly put you into one of these at the time of the appointment, or on receiving results they can text or call you and offer an appointment.

 

Appointments are released on a rolling 16 days in advance. We limit this because we feel the longer the window from enquiry to being seen, means the appointment becomes less relevant so a greater chance of patients forgetting and not attending, and it carries a greater clinical risk.

Urgent appointments

If the clinician feels the issue is urgent you will be offered a ‘same day’ appointment.

These are available in the next 24 hours, so on Monday afternoon we start releasing them for Tuesday morning. We offer between 60- 80 of these appointments a day. If we have reached our capacity or your symptoms are not match to our resources available, you may be redirected to the urgent care centre or A&E. These appointments are mainly fulfilled by a dedicated team of Allied Health Care Professionals – Advanced Nurse Practitioners, Paramedics and Physicians Associates. Within this team one person is dedicated to home visits- so will come and see you at home if you are significantly ill and therefore unable to leave home due to your symptoms. Most appointments are 15 minutes. Please bring one issue

Routine Appointments

If the clinician feels the issue is not urgent you will be offered a ‘routine’ appointment.

These are primarily fulfilled by GPs and we will always try and place with you with your Named GP to ensure there’s a continuity in healthcare. However, if this is not possible we will try and place the appointment with someone in their ‘microteam’. Every GP is part of a group of 6 other GPs (a microteam). By having these teams we’re trying to avoid patients being seen by GPs across the large team. Our aim is for both you and the GP team to enjoy continuity, as we know this generates greater satisfaction all round and better healthcare outcomes. However, if we can not do either you will be placed with another GP. Most appointments are 15 minutes. Please bring one issue.

 

If you wish to be seen by your Named GP only we can place you on a waiting list.

Nursing appointments

Routine nurse appointments

Appointments with our nursing team are booked according to reason with the most appropriate member of our highly experienced nursing team.
We offer a range of services in our treatment rooms, including:

 

Phlebotomist and Health Care Assistant appointments

Our Health care Assistants give vital support to our practice nursing team and carry out tasks such as phlebotomy (drawing blood), blood pressure measurement, dressings, and patient health checks. 

The HCAs/Phlebotomists take the majority of the blood samples in the practice and are available each day of the week. Bookings are morning and afternoons as the samples need to be delivered to the BRI lab for testing that day.

Bloods and other samples do have a deadline on a Friday, this is because samples cannot be held in the surgery over the weekend. It will depend on your surgery branch as to what time the last sample collection is due, and therefore what time they are able to offer as a last appointment on this day.

 

Secondary Care phlebotomy

Traditionally, when you attend your GP Surgery to see a member of the Nursing Team to have blood taken this will be at the request of a GP or Advanced Nurse Practitioner.  

For patients receiving care from hospital clinicians and specialised services you may be asked to attend Bridge View Medical for planned care blood tests. This is easier for the patient and relieves some pressure on the hospitals.  To enable this service to work, it is vital that the test results for these hospital requested tests go back to the hospital clinician and not to the patient's GP.  This is because many of the hospital medications cannot be managed by your GP and clinical responsibility is with the clinician prescribing the medication. 
Bridge View Medical will therefore be unable to give results for these secondary care tests and will advise that you speak to the specialist team in regards to further care.

Specialist Appointments

Some enquiries are best placed with our specialist Allied Health Crae Professionals e.g. Practice physiotherapists , and Mental Health Practitioners. 
In some cases you may see a GP who then refers you to these teams.

You may also be referred to the Health and Wellbeing Coaches, or our Social Prescribing Team.

Physiotherapy

Here at BVM we have a fantastic trio of first contact physiotherapists. The team are based in-surgery and operate telephone triage and face to face consultations in order to diagnose Musculoskeletal (MSK) Conditions. Although they do not replace secondary care physiotherapy, by using the first contact physiotherapists we can offer in-between advice, guidance and exercises whilst waiting for further treatment and investigations. 

For more information on this service and for MSK advice CLICK HERE.

Dietitian

Here at BVM we now have an in-house dietitian who will be offering support to patients to self manage conditions, as well as preventing, assessing and treating many diet and nutrition related problems. This service will help referred patients in their weight loss journey, improve their IBS symptoms, manage their diabetes or coeliac disease. Referrals are through the clinical staff at Bridge View Medical.

For more information on this service CLICK HERE

Health and Wellbeing Coaches

Our Health and Wellbeing Coaches help to support our patients 18 years and over to self-manage and change their lifestyle, to help them reach their goals.

The role of the Health and Wellbeing Coach is to:

  • Support people to improve their ability to self-manage, increase motivation levels and commitment to change their lifestyle
  • Enable behavioural change and focus on improving health-related outcomes by working with people to set personalised goals and change their behaviours
Mental Health Practititioner

Our Mental Health Practitioner can support and plan strategies to tackle a range of mental health issues as well as signposting to local support networks and groups 

Social Prescribing Team

Bridge View Medical have teamed up with Community Webs social prescribing service. This is a free social prescribing service which aims to signpost patients to local services and support for a variety of needs including: bereavement, practical support, and isolation.

Extended Hours

To improve access, we offer some appointments outside of our core opening hours for those patients who struggle to attend appointments during the day.

These appointments include evening, early morning and weekends.

If you would benefit from, and would like to book an appointment during these extended times, please indicate this on your Klinik enquiry.

Home visit requests

Home visit requests should only be made if the person who is unwell is housebound or too ill to attend a surgery branch.

All home visit requests should be made as early as possible in the day.

Patients do not have an automatic right to a home visit. 

A clinician will triage your request. If there is a clinical need to be seen then arrangements will be made for a clinician to visit you at home. 

In some instances the clinician may discuss the need for you to come to the surgery for an appointment instead or to access health care elsewhere. 

Arrange an interpreter

Patients have the right to use an interpreting service when accessing general practice appointments and NHS hospital services in England.

This can be arranged if you require an interpreter either a non-English language, or non-verbal communication such as British Sign Language.

Please ensure our Care Co-ordinator team are aware at the time of booking an appointment if an interpreter is required. This will give us time to arrange this service for you and allocate enough time for the appointment. 

Please ensure that you tell us if you are no longer able to, or no longer need to, attend your appointment so that we can cancel the booking with the interpreter service.

Chaperone Available

When attending the surgery for an appointment, you and your clinician have the right to request a chaperone to be present during your consultation. Our staff have been trained to the highest standard and are on hand to act as chaperone should you or your clinician request it. Please speak to a member of the team for further information.