Appointments

For non urgent requests such as medical certificates, queries on medication and prescription requests, please use our eConsult service, available on our home page. You will be requested to complete a form to provide the information necessary to deal with your query and you will receive response by the end of the next working day.

Nurses

Our nurses are available at the following times:

• Practice Nurses – Wednesday to Friday  08:30 to 17:00
• Health Care Assistant – 09.00-16.30  Monday to Wednesday, and Friday
• Phlebotomist – 08:30 – 12:30 Tuesday to Friday

Telephone Advice

If you require urgent advice the emergency doctor or nurse practitioner will speak to you as soon as possible. The receptionist will note basic details of the problem and your telephone number and the doctor will respond as soon as s/he can.

Our eConsult service is available for less urgent matters or if you require advice from your own doctor.

Appointments System

We operate a system which we hope will increase the availability of appointments with individual doctors and make it easier to speak to them on the phone.

This works in the following way:

1. If you phone in for an urgent appointment for today, the receptionist will take your details and a member of our Duty Team will call you back. You will be asked to give a brief explanation of why you need the appointment – the receptionists have been asked to record this information in order to assist the GP’s in prioritising their work. A Duty Team clinician will call you back to discuss your problem and take appropriate action, which may be to make an appointment for you later in the day, give you advice or issue a prescription. Urgent cases are normally seen on the day when this is appropriate.  We aim to offer an appointment with a healthcare clinician in an appropriate timescale, but if you wish to see a specific GP, you may need to book further in advance.
2. Each appointment slot is allocated an appropriate amount of time  – please ask for a longer appointment if you feel this may be necessary.
3. Since the COVID pandemic we are having to work differently in order to keep both patients and staff as safe as possible, so your appointment  may be booked as a video conference with the clinician, by telephone or in person if the clinician feels that is necessary.
4. If you wish to speak to a particular doctor regarding something which is not urgent, we will arrange for the doctor to call you back. NB this is unlikely to be on the same day if the doctor is part time or has full surgeries that day, so you will be passed to the duty doctor if it is a matter which needs immediate action. 

Please note – our phone system is linked to Raigmore Hospital, so our number may appear as a 0800 number when we call you back.

Cancel an Appointment

It is important that you inform the reception staff if you are unable to attend your appointment, this will allow that appointment to be offered to another patient. If you fail to notify the Practice that you are unable to attend, you will be sent a letter informing you that you have defaulted from your appointment. Persistent defaulters maybe removed from the list.

You can also complete our appointment cancellation notification request form. This can only be used if your appointment has been arranged for more than 24 hours in advance. (excluding weekends and public holidays). You can also text to cancel your appointment.

Home Visits

Patients are requested, where possible, to telephone before 10am if a home visit is required that day.

We would request that, apart from the genuinely housebound, all other patients attend the surgery rather than request a home visit because of the extra time home visiting takes. On average four to five patients can be seen in surgery in the time it takes to do a single house call. In addition, the care that can be offered due to the lack of adequate lighting, examination facilities and equipment means that you may not receive as good a service as the doctor may be able to offer if you came to the surgery.

Please note that the doctor may telephone you rather than visit you if this is medically appropriate. Ultimately it is the doctors right to decide whether or not a visit is appropriate for a particular set of circumstances.