| I aim to provide a personal general
medical practitioner service. As a single-handed practitioner there
are some limitations on what I can do, and I therefore ask you to
familiarise yourself with the contents of this section, so that
you can make best use of what I can offer.
Episodes of collapse, chest pain or severe
breathlessness are medical emergencies. The correct response if
you or someone you are with has any of these problems is to dial
999 and request an ambulance. GPs are not equipped to provide an
emergency service although we try to be as much help as we can when
emergencies arise. Croftwell Consulting is not an emergency service.
‘Urgent’ medical problems are a little
harder to define, but again the basic principle should be that if
you are seriously worried about anyone’s medical condition,
then dial 999. However if the problem does not appear to be immediately
of great concern or life-threatening then, provided you have registered
with the telephone service, I will be happy to give initial advice
over the phone. Depending on the circumstances I may then recommend
that I see the patient, either as a home visit or at the consulting
room, or I may recommend that the patient’s NHS doctor or
out-of-hours GP service is contacted instead. The latter are most
likely to arise if I am already engaged in seeing another patient
and any further delay would be inappropriate. For this reason among
others you should remain registered with an NHS GP.
Most medical contacts take place at the consulting
room at my house. The contacts
and fees sections detail
how to find us, and our fees. Please ensure that you telephone first
when arranging an appointment.
The basic consultation time is set at 15 minutes,
which is twice as long as the average NHS GP appointment. Longer
appointments can be arranged as required, and are best specified
beforehand so that the appointments list runs to time. Sometimes
it becomes obvious only during a consultation that a problem may
need more time to sort out. If so and it is not convenient to extend
the booked time then a repeat appointment will be required.
It is a great help if you complete and return
the registration
form (by post) in advance of an appointment, as this gives me
some basic medical information and saves time in the consultation.
Registration is not essential in advance of a consultation, but
it is for the telephone and email services. The administration
charge that accompanies registration is refunded against your
first bill for any service (consultation, email or telephone advice).
Provided they are used properly both are
useful means of medical communication, but it is not possible to
make a diagnosis by either method. Phone or email messages often
suffice when a factual query needs an answer and email dispenses
with the need for the two parties to be available simultaneously.
Email is not suitable for sending confidential messages; these are
best sent by fax or
phoned directly to me.
Should a home visit be necessary this can
be arranged. However these normally would need to be within reasonable
travelling distance of St Andrews (a radius of about 15 miles) and
fitted around
any booked appointments. Non-urgent visits to more distant locations
are possible, provided they
can be appropriately scheduled. Please contact me to discuss the
matter, and I shall try to be as helpful as I can.
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