Help us to Provide a Better Service
New Patients
Registering with the Practice is a simple matter of calling in to obtain a form and questionnaire from the reception desk. The form is sent to the Health Authority who request your records from your last GP. These normally arrive within a few weeks. If you have complex medical problems we can obtain your notes within a few days.
You can help us by:
Completing our new patient questionnaire, this helps us to obtain some basic health information about you. If medical problems are indicated we will ask you to attend for treatment.
Phoning for Advice
If you need advice but don't think you need to take up an appointment the doctors are all very happy to discuss a problem on the phone. The receptionist will take brief details and your phone number so that the doctor can phone you back.
Repeat Prescriptions
You can request your repeat prescription in person, by post or by phone. If you live more than a mile from the nearest chemist you can apply to collect your medication from one of our dispensaries. Prescriptions ordered before midday can be collected after 10am after two full working days at Penryn, and the next day in the surgeries at Mawnan Smith and Stithians.
You can help us by:
- Making sure you have not run completely out of your medication before ordering more. If ordering on a Friday make sure you have enough to last until Tuesday.
- Making sure you clearly identify the name and strength of the medication you require. Ideally keep hold of the counterfoil from your last prescription and indicate on this which you require.
- Phoning only after 10am for your repeat prescription, this eases congestion at the busiest time of the day and allows those needing urgent appointments to get through.
- Enclosing a SAE when posting if you require us to send it back to you.
- In Penryn by dropping your written request into the post box next to the dispensary this helps us and also saves time waiting to see the Receptionist.
The Doctor on-duty
Approximately one day a week your doctor is likely to be on-call for the Practice. He carries out the majority of the requested home visits, responds to emergencies, answers general enquiries and gives telephone advice. As you may expect at times the duty doctor is likely to be very busy.
You can help by:
- Only requesting an urgent appointment if you are too unwell to wait until the next day.
- Confining your discussions with the duty doctor to only urgent problems and keeping back routine problems for routine appointments.
- Being patient when waiting for the duty doctor, he may be busy on an emergency.
Home Visits
If you are not able to come to the surgery due to illness the duty doctor will visit you.
You can help us by:
- Phoning us before 10am in order to arrange a home visit. This helps us to plan the rounds for the day. The more distant corners of the practice area can often take some time to reach, particularly in the summer and grouping visits together for a particular doctor can save a great deal of time.
- Only requesting visits for genuine medical need - where the patient is too ill to attend the surgery. In general we will try to encourage young people and children to be brought in, except in exceptional circumstances. Consultations are much quicker, easier and safer in a well-lit doctor's consulting room with access to all the necessary equipment, records and nursing staff. If you are experiencing problems with transport to the surgery there is a voluntary car service based in Falmouth called Transmedical who will bring you to an appointment for a nominal charge (telephone 01326 317193).
- Checking that the doctor has adequate directions to your house and your phone number if you feel he may experience difficulty finding you. There cannot be a GP in Cornwall who hasn't spent a fruitless hour looking for a patient's house wishing he'd phoned for directions before leaving the surgery.
Results, Specimens, Forms and Letters
Specimens are collected from the surgery at around 2.30pm and are transported to the laboratory. Blood test results are normally back within 5 days and most x-rays take a week to 10 days. Your doctor or nurse will try to give you a realistic estimate of when to call for a result, very occasionally this proves to be optimistic.
The doctors are happy to complete insurance forms, reports and references for other purposes but in most cases these fall outside NHS commitments, they are chargeable and take several days to complete. Prices are available at reception.
You can help us by:
- Being patient with the receptionist - if a report is not completed, a result not back, or the doctor has not yet looked at it, it is not her fault.
- Leaving your enquiry until the afternoon - the reception desk is generally quieter by that time of day.
- Bringing in specimens before 2pm if they need to get to the laboratory and please only provide specimens in the proper labelled containers available at reception - the laboratories will not accept anything else.
Chaperones
The doctors and nurses at the surgery are acutely aware of the difficulties faced by both their patients and themselves when carrying out intimate examinations unsupervised in the consulting room. Please do not be afraid to request a chaperone of your choice to be present in the room - we will not be offended.
Complaints and Suggestions
We do recognize that sometimes our standards may not be up to expectations and we want to hear your suggestions. At Penryn we operate a standard, nationally agreed, NHS procedure for handling complaints. Please ask a receptionist for a complaint form or telephone the surgery to speak to Mrs Kerr our Practice Manager.
We always take complaints seriously. The partners meet regularly and all complaints are discussed in detail. You will always receive a written response to a formal complaint.
Confidentiality
You can rest assured that ALL the members of the team are bound by the same strict rules governing absolute confidentiality of your medical details, as are the doctors themselves. You can help us by not asking for information about another patient unless they are very young or are not able to make decisions for themselves.
E-mail us at:
docs@penryn.co.uk with your suggestions, complaints and any other administrative matters - but please note, at the moment we are not able to respond to medical enquiries or prescription requests by this route.
Links you may find helpful
Royal Cornwall Hospitals: www.cornwall.nhs.uk/rcht/
National Institute for Clinical Excellence (NICE): www.nice.org.uk
Diabetes UK: www.diabetes.org.uk
Central Cornwall Primary Care Trust: www.cornwall.nhs.uk/centralpct
10 steps to healthy living: www.jr2.ox.ac.uk/Bandolier/booth/hliving/10steps.html
MASTA: www.masta.org
Doctor Patient Partnership: www.dpp.org.uk
Patient UK (advice on self treatment etc): www.patient.co.uk
BBC health & fitness site: www.bbc.co.uk/health
NHS direct: www.nhsdirect.nhs.uk/
Reuters Health information: www.reutershealth.com
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