If possible please try to telephone reception before 10am if you require a home visit. Tel: 01254 457595
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.
Home visits are only available for patients who are housebound (This means that they are unable to leave the house for any reason).
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 Medical Centre.
Home visit makes clinical sense and is the best way of giving medical opinion, in cases involving:
- The terminally ill.
- The truly housebound patient for whom travel to premises by car would cause deterioration in their medical conditions
Following a conversation with a health professional, it may be agreed that a seriously ill patient may be helped by a GP’s visit.
In most of these cases a visit would not be appropriate use of GP’s time or best for you:
- Heart Attack – severe crushing chest pain. The best approach is to call an emergency paramedic ambulance.
- Common symptoms of childhood: fevers, cold, cough, earache, headache, diarrhoea/vomiting and most cases of abdominal pain.
These patients are usually well enough to travel to the surgery. It is not harmful to take a child with fever outside.Adults with common problems, such as cough, sore throat, influenza, general malaise, back pain and abdominal pain are also readily transportable to the doctor’s surgery. Transport arrangements are the responsibility of the patients or their carer.