Surgeries are run by an appointment system for your convenience between 08:00 – 17:30 - Monday to Friday with one late evening per week on a Wednesday. Appointments may be made by telephone or by calling into the surgery. Our staff are trained to ask questions to enable them to deal with your enquiries effectively, so please give them as much information as they ask for, it is all in confidence.

At Burnfield Medical Practice we aim to operate a system which makes it as easy as possible for our patients to access a doctor, nurse, or other health care professional.

Our excellent Reception staff are trained to ask specific questions to help to direct our patients to the most appropriate appointment type (telephone or surgery) with the most appropriate clinician (doctor, physiotherapist, practice nurse, or clinical technicians.) If you are unable to keep an appointment, please let us know as soon as possible so that we can offer the appointment to someone else.  

We have a practice physiotherapist available for our patients.  Please telephone reception and ask our reception staff for an appointment. All appointments are 30 minutes.  

For those of you who are not patients of the practice, you too can book a private appointment, please telephone reception 01463 220077, inform them you are wishing to make a private appointment.  Each appointment is 40 mins and the first private appointment is £65 and each follow up appointment is £40.00.

Fourth Year students from Aberdeen University

As a training practice we also undertake to help with training for five-week periods approximately six times a year for students studying for their (MBChB).

We hope you will help in their learning.

The out-of-hours service is manned by NHS 24 Medical Professionals. They provide emergency advice cover from 6pm to 8am Monday to Thursday and from 6pm on Friday to 8am on Monday.

Telephone 111 

This number automatically diverts calls to the NHS 24 helpline who will either give advice - advise you to see an appropriate health professional - have you contact your Practice - or arrange for the appropriate out-of-hours services to deal with your medical problem as soon as possible.

A detailed message of any contact will reach your own GP before 9am the following morning.

In a genuine emergency, you should call 999. Chest pains and / or shortness of breath constitute an emergency.  

Please tell us:

• if there’s a specific doctor, nurse or other health professional you would prefer to respond
• if you would prefer to consult with the doctor or nurse by phone or  face-to-face
• if you need an interpreter
• if you have any other access or communication needs

As a practice, we enforce a ‘Did Not Attend’ policy, due to a minority of patients who have failed to attend their appointments. One missed appointment can have a significant setback on our appointment availability and generates a great deal of unnecessary frustration for both our staff and our patients.  

By enforcing our policy, we aim to monitor the number of unattended appointments on a regular basis, to ensure we keep them to a minimum. If a patient is more than 6 minutes late to an appointment this will be recorded as a ‘did not attend’ and the patients responsibility to reschedule if required. If a patient has missed 4 appointments within a 12 month period, they will receive a written warning from the practice.  If they then miss a 5^th appointment within the 12 month period, the patient will be brought to the attention of the practice management for consideration of removal from the practice.

We are enforcing this policy to ensure that all of our patients receive the appropriate care and treatment they deserve, and to help open up our appointment availability to avoid excessive waiting times.

How can you help?

1. Keep a note of your appointment, add to your calendar or set up a reminder.
2. Encourage friends or family members to attend or cancel their appointment.
3. Please call us no matter how late to cancel your appointment.
4. Make sure you have signed up to receive SMS messages and we will send a reminder which you can reply to if you need to cancel your appointment

Exclusions

No patient will be removed from the practice list without due consideration of their individual circumstances and reasons for non-attendance. The purpose of this policy is not to penalise patients with valid medical reasons for non-attendance.

If the practice is aware of special circumstances surrounding a patients non- attendance, for example patients who have been admitted to hospital or have dementia, the medical team reserve the right to exclude the patient from management under this policy.

Patients concerned regarding their management under this policy or who are having problems attending should speak to the surgery. Lack of organisation or forgetting is not an acceptable reason for non-attendance.

We appreciate the effort our patients make to attend their appointment on time and therefore do our best to run as close to the booked appointment times as possible. Therefore enforcing a late attendance policy ensures the practice runs as smoothly as possible.

Our Policy:

Patients who arrive more than 6 minutes late to an appointment will be recorded as a 'did not attend' and will be advised by reception to arrange another appointment. 

Receptionists are not permitted to interrupt doctors during surgery to request them to see late patients.