If you are unable to attend the surgery on medical grounds, you may wish to ask the doctor to see you at home. Please do not ask the doctor to call unless the patient is genuinely too ill to come to the surgery.
Please contact the surgery before 10:00.
In an EMERGENCY please ring any time for further advice. Please remember that on average the doctor can see four or five patients in surgery in the time taken to make one home visit. We try to abide by the following guidelines:
Visiting Guidelines as Recommended by The British Medical Association in Action
Green (visit recommended)
Situation where GP visiting makes clinical sense and provides the best way to give a medical opinion.
a. The terminally ill
b. The truly bedbound patient for whom travel to premises by car would cause deterioration in medical condition.
Amber (visit may be useful)
Situation where on occasions visiting may be useful. Where, after initial assessment over the telephone, a seriously ill patient may be helped by a GP’s attendance to prepare them to travel to hospital.
That is where a GP’s other commitments do not prevent him/her from arriving prior to the ambulance. Examples of such situations are:
a. heart attack (chest pains)
b. severe shortness of breath
c. severe haemorrhage (bleeding)
It must be understood that, if a GP is about to embark on a booked surgery of 25 patients but is informed that one of his/her patients is suffering from symptoms suggestive of a heart attack (chest pains), the sensible approach may be to send an emergency paramedical ambulance rather than attending personally).
Red (visit not appropriate use of GP’s time)
a. Common symptoms of childhood, fevers, colds, earache, diarrhoea, vomiting and most cases of abdominal pain. These patients are almost always well enough to travel by car.
The old wives’ tale that it is unwise to take a child out with a fever is blatantly untrue. It may well be that these children are not indeed fit to travel by bus, or walk, but car transport is sensible and always available from friends, relatives or taxi firms. It is not necessarily a doctor’s job to arrange such transport facilities.
b. Adults with common problems of cough, sore throat, flu, back pain, abdominal pain are also readily transportable by car to the doctor’s premises.
c. Common problems in the elderly, such as poor mobility, joint pain, general malaise, would also be best treated by consultation at a doctor’s premises. The exception to this would be in the truly bedbound patient.