Appointments – Pelaw Medical Centre

All our surgeries are by appointment only. Routine appointments can be booked up to one month in advance and where possible with the doctor of your choice. However if you feel that your problem is urgent, we have one surgery each day for such problems. Should, on days of high demand, this surgery be fully booked, you may be asked to come along at the end of surgery and wait for the first available doctor to be seen.

The surgery now offers an internet appointment booking facility and online prescription request. For further details please ask one of the reception staff.

Short Consultation Surgery

We are constantly striving to improve our services to patients and understand their difficulty in booking appointments. Children five years and under will be given an appointmnet if required. We have an emergency surgery daily, however these appointments are allocated by a GP following a telephone triage consultation.

Telephone Advice

To ensure confidentiality, telephone calls during consultations are avoided therefore if you need to speak to a doctor or nurse by telephone the receptionist will take your details and telephone number and ask the doctor or nurse to call you back a time that is convenient to them, usually at the end of surgery. In order to help prioritise calls and workloads, the receptionists will ask for details to pass on to the doctor or nurse; if you feel your problem is urgent, please let the receptionist know.

Practice Nurses

In a number of cases it might be worth considering an appointment with a practice nurse rather than a doctor. Practice nurses are qualified to deal with many conditions and you may be seen more quickly.

Cancellations

If you cannot attend an appointment for any reason please inform us as soon as possible in order for us to give the slot to someone else.

Home Visits

Whilst we encourage our patients to come to the surgery, where we have the proper equipment and facilities available, we do appreciate this is not always possible. In this respect, if you do need a home visit, you can help us by calling reception before 10:00.

You may only request a home visit if you are housebound or are too ill to visit the practice. Your GP will only visit you at home if they think that your medical condition requires it and will also decide how urgently a visit is needed. Please bear this in mind and be prepared to provide suitable details to enable the doctor to schedule house calls

You can also be visited at home by a community nurse if you are referred by your GP. You should also be visited at home by a health visitor if you have recently had a baby or if you are newly registered with a GP and have a child under five years.

What to do when the GP practice is closed:

If you need medical help fast but it’s not an emergency call 111
If it’s a life-threatening emergency call 999

NHS 111 is the number to call when you need medical help fast but it’s not a life-threatening emergency.

Calls to 111 are FREE from landlines and mobiles
NHS 111 is available 24/7, every day of the year

When to call 111

You should call 111 when:

you think you need to go to A&E or to another NHS urgent care service
your GP surgery is closed and you need healthcare advice
you don’t know who to call for medical help.

When to call 999

Call 999 for life threatening emergencies such as:

Major accident or trauma
Severe breathlessness
Severe bleeding
Loss of consciousness
Severe chest pain.

Out-of-hours services are provided during the following periods when the surgery is closed: 18:00pm until 08:00am the next morning and all weekend.

During normal practice opening hours, the practice remains your first point of contact for all routine requests.

Teaching Practice

As a teaching practice, we have a new GP registrar every 6 months as part of their GP training. We also have 3^rd year medical students for part of the year and a Foundation 2 doctor every 6 months.

Video Consultations

Clinicians will sometimes video patient consultations, this is an important part of medical teaching and we hope that you feel able to agree to your consultation being filmed. This will help towards the doctors training and will only be used for training and assessment purposes. The recording will not take place without the patient’s consent. If you agree to your consultation being recorded then you will beasked to sign consent form. The video tape is confidential and will be deleted after use.

Sickness Certificates

You do not require a doctor's sickness certificate for any illness lasting seven days or less. Your employer may however require you to complete a self-certification form (SC2) which is available from your employer or on the HMRC website.

Evidence that you are sick

If you are sick for more than seven days, your employer can ask you to give them some form of medical evidence to support payment of SSP (statutory sick pay).

Gateshead Extra Care Services

More appointments available

Gateshead Extra Care Service now provide additional appointments with local GPs and Nurses.

The service offer pre-bookable appointments for patient who require urgent attention at Central Gateshead Health Centre and Blaydon Primary Care Centre.

8am-8pm: Monday to Friday

9am-2pm: Saturday and Sunday

Contact your GP Practice to book an appointment.

You can apply to register with the practice if you live permanently within the practice boundary. A copy of the 'New Patient Registration Form' can be obtained by asking one of the reception staff or can be downloaded from the link below. Or you can simply click the button below to Register Online.

Register Online (opens in new tab)

All new patients are offered a health check with a member of the healthcare team to ensure that any required tests are up to date and that we have an accurate note of any repeat medication you may be taking.

Change of Name & Address

Please inform the practice if you change your name, address or telephone number. There may be times when appointments need to be cancelled or re-arranged so it is always useful if you can give us a daytime contact number.

Medical treatment is available from the date of registration. Please contact reception for further information.

Temporary Registration

If you are ill while away from home or if you are not registered with a doctor but need to see one you can receive emergency treatment from the local GP practice for 14 days. After 14 days you will need to register as a temporary or permanent patient.

You can be registered as a temporary patient for up to three months. This will allow you to be on the local practice list and still remain a patient of your permanent GP. After three months you will have to re-register as a temporary patient or permanently register with that practice.

To register as a temporary patient simply contact the local practice you wish to use. Practices do not have to accept you as a temporary patient although they do have an obligation to offer emergency treatment. You cannot register as a temporary patient at a practice in the town or area where you are already registered.

Download the Temporary Resident Registration Form

These fact sheets have been written to explain the role of UK health services, the National Health Service (NHS), to newly-arrived individuals seeking asylum. They cover issues such as the role of GPs, their function as gatekeepers to the health services, how to register and how to access emergency services.

Special care has been taken to ensure that information is given in clear language, and the content and style has been tested with user groups. Open the leaflets in one of the following languages

English	Urdu
Albanian	Hindi
Arabic	Lithuanian
Bulgarian	Polish
Chinese (Cantonese)	Portuguese
Chinese (Mandarin)	Spanish
Russian	French
Turkish	Punjabi
Gujerati	Somali
Croatian	Bengali
Farsi